Despite a threat from Mayor Yuri Luzhkov that he “will not permit such parades,” GLBT people are expected to stage Moscow’s first Pride march May 27.

In line with local requirements, organizers will request a permit for the parade on May 15. They should receive an official response by May 17.

If the permit is denied, organizers plan to make the final decision on whether to march just three hours before the parade’s planned start time, during the closing session of a pride-week anti-homophobia conference.

Mayor Luzhkov has said the march would “provoke society.”

“I will not permit such parades,” he said in February. “My philosophy is my negative attitude to these phenomena, as I believe them to be unnatural to the human nature.”

Nikolai Alekseev, one of the Pride organizers, says they need support from abroad.

“If you want to help us, then, we hope to see you in Moscow soon,” he said. “We don’t need money in this fight. We need your presence with us.”

As the parade date approaches, forces opposed to the march have escalated their tactics.

On April 30, around 300 religious extremists, skinheads and members of Russian nationalist organizations attacked people entering Moscow’s Renaissance Event Club as it hosted the first in a new series of gay parties.

The protesters threw eggs, tomatoes, bottles and rocks while chanting “Pederasts go away” and “Shame on you, gays and lesbians.”

It was “the most massive and aggressive action of homophobic extremists against sexual minorities in Russian history,” Alekseev said.

People inside the club were evacuated by police in small groups and whisked away in special buses. There were no serious injuries.

“This was a very well-planned action,” Alekseev noted. “Participants were brought to … the club by buses and then taken back also by buses. The protest took place late at night before the national holiday, which caught police and media unprepared.”

Some of the protesters told reporters they will target the Pride parade in a similar fashion.

The next evening, about 100 demonstrators from the same groups visited another gay bar, Tri Obezyany.

Riot police arrested 39 of them for hooliganism after they tried to prevent patrons from entering the venue, shouted insults at those coming and going, and tossed eggs, fruit and bottles.

Meanwhile, a new poll has found that 49 percent of Russians believe prominent Islamic mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin of the Russian Muslim Central Directorate should be prosecuted for saying in February that gays “should be bashed” if they march.

Article 282 of Russia’s criminal code bans inciting hatred toward a social group. Gay activists asked the General Prosecutor to open a criminal investigation of Tadzhuddin, but, on May 3, the office rejected the request, explaining, “The Quran is a legal document in Russia and it says that gays should be killed.”

Activists have appealed the decision.

A gay bar was torched in Bolton, England, April 26, the Bolton Evening News reported.

Arsonists poured gasoline on the front door of the Star and Garter Public House and set it alight. Firefighters extinguished the blaze before it spread.

Landlady Christine Riley said the incident “could have been a homophobic attack.” Two men were detained by police for questioning.

Bolton is a suburb of Manchester.

Web sites reporting on Iran’s mistreatment of gays were knocked off the Internet this month by Iranian government hackers, journalist and blogger Doug Ireland reported in Gay City News.

“The goal of the hack attack was to bury news of, and stifle protest about, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s massive anti-gay pogrom,” Ireland said.

Among the sites taken down were those of the Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization and the British gay-rights group OutRage!. The front page of PGLO’s site has been replaced by a “parked” page with links to gay shopping. OutRage!’s site displays only the line: “No Web site is configured at this address.”

OutRage! has doggedly pursued the story of Iran’s alleged ongoing executions of men whom the group says were found guilty of engaging in gay sex. The group’s latest research is online at http://petertatchell.net/international/iranstatemurder.htm.

Ireland said Web sites of Iranian exile groups also have been hacked.

The European Court of Justice ruled April 27 that the United Kingdom should have given a transsexual woman her retirement pension at age 60, when women become eligible, rather than at age 65, when men become eligible.

The U.K. withheld Sarah Richards’ money because her birth certificate says she is a man and the nation did not, at the time Richards turned 60, allow changes to a birth certificate following sex-reassignment surgery, which Richards underwent in 2001.

The court said that was discriminatory “unequal treatment.”

The U.K. laws were later changed, and birth certificates now can be altered, but the policy was not made retroactive and did not apply to Richards.

The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission says nine Cameroonian men acquitted April 21 of engaging in homosexual activity remain in prison nonetheless.

“The government is forcing the men to stand trial again,” the organization said.

IGLHRC previously had said the men were released on April 24 after a High Court judge, in a 10-minute trial, determined that prosecutors had no proof of the men’s alleged crimes.

The men were arrested in May 2005 at a nightclub in the capital city, Yaoundé, and have been imprisoned since. In March, they were adopted by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience.

Section 347 of Cameroon’s penal code bans the practice of homosexuality under penalty of five years in prison.