James Warren/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesElton John has long had issues with Russia and its policy towards the LGBTQ community. Following the 2013 enactment of Russia’s so-called “gay propaganda” law — designed to “protect” children against being “exposed” to homosexuality — gay people in Russia have been arrested, and there has been an increase in hate crimes and acts of violence.
Now, he’s written a letter to Russian president Vladimir Putin, accusing him of “hypocrisy” on this topic.
Elton’s letter came in response to a Putin interview that ran in the Financial Times. In it, Putin declared that liberal governments have spent too much time trying to embrace “sexual diversity.”
“I am not trying to insult anyone because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia. But we have no problem with LGBT persons…let them live as they wish,” Putin told the paper. “But some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.”
“Let everyone be happy, we have no problem with that,” he added. “But this must not be allowed to overshadow the culture, traditions and traditional family values of millions of people making up the core population.”
In his letter, Elton writes, “I was deeply upset when I read your recent interview…I find duplicity in your comment that you want LGBT people to ‘be happy’ and that ‘we have no problem in that.”’
He then points out, “Russian distributors chose to heavily censor my film Rocketman by removing all references to my finding true happiness through my 25-year-relationship with [my husband] David and the raising of my two beautiful sons. This feels like hypocrisy to me.”
Elton then declares that he’s proud to live somewhere the government “has evolved to recognize the universal human right to love whoever we want.”
Copyright © 2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.