“Moscow is a song about the daft optimism of being in love, when you just want to run away with that person, dream about being together forever, the house, the dog, and nothing else matters,” London indie band Autoheart says of “Moscow”, their song about gay rights in Russia. “It has long been one of our favourite tracks — and for us, it has more relevance now than ever. We are lucky in Britain to have laws that mean whether we are gay, straight, bisexual or anything in between, our relationships are recognised and our rights protected by law. But in Russia there is an anti-gay crisis happening right now: their government does not want to afford their people those same rights and are trying to criminalise even the discussion of gay equality. Something similar happened in Britain not long ago: Section 28, brought in by Thatcher’s Tory party in the Eighties to stop teachers from talking about same-sex relationships in a positive way, was only repealed in 2003. These laws only serve to protect intolerance, ignorance, homophobia and hate crimes. In our video, two gay Russian soldiers kiss in front of the Kremlin — yet just last month same a group of same-sex couples in Moscow were violently attacked and then arrested for doing just this. . . Wouldn’t it be amazing if one day everyone all consenting adults could be free to love who they want to without fear of persecution?”
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