Russian Sitcom Star Wants to Burn All Gay People Alive in Ovens


Ivan Okhlobystin

Mikhail Popov/Wikimedia Commons

Russian actor/ex-Orthodox priest Ivan Okhlobystin, who’s famous for playing an ill-mannered recovering alcoholic on the medical sitcom Interny (a show sometimes described as “the Russian Scrubs“), has an interesting take on gay rights. He isn’t for them. In fact, he’d rather be done with the whole concept of gay people all together.

“I would put all the gays alive into an oven,” Okhlobystin told cheering fans in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. “This is Sodom and Gomorrah! As a religious person, I cannot be indifferent about it because it is a real threat to my children!”

He also compared homosexuality to fascism (“queer fascism!” that is), which is strange, since shoving human bodies into ovens is something closely associated with fascist death camps and the Holocaust.

The 47-year-old actor and filmmaker attempted to form his own political party in 2012, but failed to get state registration. He also once tried to run for president of Russia, and has pledged to donate the proceeds from an upcoming book to purchase more weapons for the mass-murdering Assad regime in Syria.

To put this in context, the Russian government recently put in place anti-gay legislation, which allows for fining and detaining gay and pro-gay individuals, and bans what is deemed homosexual propaganda to minors.

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