{"id":487533,"date":"2019-06-29T07:03:53","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T13:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=853700"},"modified":"2019-06-29T07:03:53","modified_gmt":"2019-06-29T13:03:53","slug":"elton-john-pens-open-letter-criticizing-putins-duplicity-toward-lgbtq-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/elton-john-pens-open-letter-criticizing-putins-duplicity-toward-lgbtq-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Elton John Pens Open Letter Criticizing Putin\u2019s \u2018Duplicity\u2019 Toward LGBTQ People"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elton John<\/a> penned an open letter to Vladimir Putin<\/a> Friday criticizing the Russian president\u2019s policies toward the LGBTQ community. The letter, published to John\u2019s Facebook<\/a>, follows Russia\u2019s decision to censor<\/a> five minutes of Rocketman<\/a><\/em> due to the country\u2019s \u201chomosexual propaganda\u201d law, as well as comments Putin made about sexual diversity in a recent interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am not trying to insult anyone because we have been condemned for our alleged homophobia. But we have no problem with LGBT persons. God forbid, let them live as they wish,\u201d Putin told the Financial Times<\/em><\/a>. \u201cBut some things do appear excessive to us. They claim now that children can play five or six gender roles.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response, John wrote to Putin in his open letter, \u201cI was deeply upset when I read your recent interview in the Financial Times<\/em>. I strongly disagree with your view that pursuing policies that embrace multicultural and sexual diversity are obsolete in our societies.\u201d<\/p>\n

John continued, \u201cI find duplicity in your comment that you want LGBT people to \u2018be happy\u2019 and that \u2018we have no problem in that.\u2019 Yet Russian distributors chose to heavily censor my film Rocketman<\/em> by removing all references to my finding true happiness through my 25-year relationship with David and the raising of my two beautiful sons. This feels like hypocrisy to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following the release of Rocketman<\/em> in Russia, John and the filmmakers released a joint statement<\/a> slamming Russian censors for removing \u201call scenes with kissing, sex and oral sex between men have been cut out,\u201d a Russian film critic revealed. The Russian version also removed the film\u2019s postscript that stated John and his partner were raising children.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud to live in a part of the world where our governments have evolved to recognize the universal human right to love whoever we want,\u201d John added.<\/p>\n

At the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, Putin responded to John\u2019s open letter. \u201cI have a lot of respect for him, he is a genius musician, we all enjoy his music, but I think he is mistaken,\u201d Putin said (via Reuters<\/a>), adding that Russia has a \u201crelaxed and unprejudiced\u201d attitude toward LGBT people but minors need to be \u201cleft alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elton John penned an open letter to Vladimir Putin Friday criticizing the Russian president\u2019s policies toward the LGBTQ community. The letter, published to John\u2019s Facebook, follows Russia\u2019s decision to censor five minutes of Rocketman due to the country\u2019s \u201chomosexual propaganda\u201d law, as well as comments Putin made about sexual diversity in a recent interview. \u201cI am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-487533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-22 01:00:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487533\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}