![]() I went to Russia for two weeks in early November and knew I’d have to file in December to get the story into the February issue, while the world was paying attention. What were the challenges particular to this assignment? I was interested in fear, and, of course, fear’s corollary, courage. In Russia, I wanted to know what it felt like to be on the wrong side of an official, state-sanctioned crusade, especially after things had been slowly improving for years. I don’t mean anti-gay! I mean that in Uganda, I’d really focused on the homophobes, what they believed and why they believed it and what it felt like to be consumed by hate. It felt like an opportunity to revisit these issues from the other side. But it had been a few years, and here was this important and fascinating story. (I’ve been reporting on hard-right movements for years.) They’re important, but they can poison you, and I felt pretty poisoned. Eric had read an earlier essay of mine for Harper’s, “ Straight Man’s Burden,” which is a report from Uganda on the men behind that country’s so-called “Kill the Gays” bill. After that, I told myself I wasn’t going to do that kind of story anymore. I like working with young editors, because they care about the story as much as you do. This was his first full feature, I believe, and he’s since been promoted. Actually, he was assistant to the editor in chief, Jim Nelson. Jeff Sharlet: A young editor at GQ, Eric Sullivan, called and asked if I was interested. Storyboard: How did this story come to be? He took us through the piece line by line, covering big-picture questions as well as grace notes about craft. He worked on the story with support from the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. Sharlet, author of the bestselling The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism in the Heart of American Power, C Street, and Sweet Heaven When I Die, is Mellon assistant professor of English at Dartmouth. The timing dovetailed with Human Rights Watch’s renewed admonition that Russia address the “deteriorating situation” of LGBT harassment and violence. "Mephistopheles embodies evil in this world and this person decided to act, most likely, to kill Evil," he said.Īrchitecture preservationists are expected to gather outside the building on Sunday for an informal protest amid fears of a growing intolerance in Russia.Last week, on the eve of the Sochi Olympics, GQ published “Inside the Iron Closet,” a Jeff Sharlet story that revealed disturbing details about what it’s like to be gay in Russia. As a believer, he finds images of a demon disgusting," Orthodox Church spokesman Roman Bagdasarov told pro-Kremlin daily Izvestia. "It's possible to understand the culprit. Residents also launched an online petition urging Prosecutor-General Yuri Chaika to intervene and track down the culprits.īut a spokesman for the hugely powerful Russian Orthodox Church said the attack was an understandable reaction. Prosecutors on Thursday opened a probe into destruction of cultural heritage, which carries a jail term of up to two years. The figure on Lakhtinskaya Street dated back to around 1910 and depicted a "mythical bat-winged creature," the city's heritage committee said. The seemingly religiously-motivated act of vandalism caused an outcry in the former imperial capital. Cossacks once defended the borders of the Russian empire but now often campaign to promote conservative values.Įstablished Cossack groups in the city denied any knowledge of this group, however.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |