"It's weird to hate gays"

Tomich painted his motorcycle in the colors of the rainbow, attached a sign to it “It’s strange to hate gays” and decided to see how people on the streets of our city would react to this.

The author of the video with a multi-colored motorcycle, Alexander, works as a technical director at an IT company. He says that he once had a negative attitude towards homosexuals.

“I also grew up in this environment, not very respectful, not very tolerant, not very tolerant of all kinds of minorities. This is perhaps a clear example of how it works. In fact, this is not so much about gays, but in general about the general disrespect, the general hatred that reigns in Russia. Then I began to understand this issue. The further I looked into it, the more I realized how ridiculous it all was. Every homophobe pretends to be a little Hitler, who says that he is a proper Aryan, and gays are subhumans. Although there are no arguments here other than medieval prejudices,” says Alexander.

In the future, Alexander plans to turn his action into the “It’s Strange to Hate Gays” movement. Although, already now, when he shot a couple of videos about how Tomsk residents react to his motorcycle, Alexander was hit with a barrage of negativity and threats.

“The news about my experiment is published on the popular local public page VKontakte . Discussions with thousands of comments flare up there, very heated discussions, where adults are seriously discussing how to punish me. How to ruin my motorcycle, burn it, blow it up, how to maim or kill me. That is, this is typical medieval thinking, complete rejection of dissent. That is, you don’t think like us – burn a heretic,” says Alexander.

In addition, according to Alexander, he was already threatened that he would be sued for his actions.

“On a regular basis, in addition to threats of physical harm, I receive threats of legal action. In my opinion, this is not supported by anything. Actually, what am I saying? I'm saying that it's strange to hate a certain category of people. I don’t know how this can be attributed to the law banning the promotion of homosexuality. If someone believes that I am breaking any law, they have the right to sue me. I'll be happy to win this case. This will only be additional advertising for this movement,” added the organizer of the action.

But Alexander is not only threatened. He also has supporters from different cities who support Alexander and thank him for what he does.

“A lot of people write to me like: “I’m not gay, but thank you, this is very correct and we need to do something about it.” Gay or not gay - it doesn't matter. Conventionally, you are walking down the street and someone hits a pregnant woman, and you think: “well, it’s none of my business, let them do what they want with her.” This is the natural desire of any civilized person so that the rights of other people are not infringed in exactly the same way as his rights are not infringed. Because tomorrow you could be in this place,” says Alexander.