Homophobic tweet by Russian Embassy in Canada causing outrage

“It’s unacceptable. It should be condemned, publicly,” says Montreal city councillor Serge Sasseville.

“They’re bullying the LGBTQ community,” says lawyer and former vice president of Pride Montreal Jean-Sébastien Boudreault.

Many deplored the hate speech and demanded a response and action by the Canadian government.

“I expect that since it’s been issued by an embassy in Ottawa that our minister of foreign affairs Melanie Jolie and our prime minister Justin Trudeau will publicly condemn that tweet and reiterate their support for the LGBTQAI+ community because we’re in 2022 and we cannot live in a society where such a publication goes without as reaction from our government,” says Sasseville.

“It’s frustrating, it’s disheartening it really really really sad Canada should react,” says Boudreault.

The tweet featured a picture of the pride flag with a red symbol prohibiting it. It wrote “It is all about family. Family is a man and a woman and children.”

It is all about family. Family is a man and a woman and children. pic.twitter.com/zJeONBDq0J

— Russia in Canada (@RussianEmbassyC) November 25, 2022

This comes after Russia adopted a law on Thursday, Nov. 24 banning what it calls “Gay propaganda”, prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality in media, books and more.

“It goes far beyond the frontiers of Russia they’re affirming it its not the government of Russia speaking to Russians in Russia its the Russian embassy in Canada issuing in another country such a strong statement against the 2slgbtq community,” says Sasseville.

“You probably have LGBTQ Russian people that are seeing this and saying the motherland is saying this against us and that’s probably one of the reasons they left Russia to come to Canada so we need to think about the LGBTQ community we need to defend the LGBTQ community and we need to remember that human rights are very fragile,” says Boudreault.

“We really live in somber era where all of the wins that we had over the past decades we had to fight again,” says Sasseville.

“LGBTQ rights are human rights you know so lets hope that my brothers and sisters in Russia I wish them the best I hope they’re safe, says Boudreault.