Rise in Russia's Homophobic Violence

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/01/russia-rise-homophobic-violence

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This article really highlights how unaccepting the world can still be towards people who are LGBT. Even in today's day and age you would have the assumption that at least people are more understanding about topics of homosexuality, bisexuality, etc. but apparently in places like Russia there is a massive rise of homophobic violence. For example, people would try to publicly humiliate people who are known to be gay by means of humiliation in public, cyber bullying, verbal harassment, etc. People in the LGBT community even feel that they are being "terrorized" in some cases with all the homophobia. Also people in this article discuss how this  heavily affects teenagers as well by saying that "People "scorn and hate lesbians, and hate and beat gays", said Lena, a 14-year-old from Abakan, a city of 170,000 in Siberia. She said an acquaintance had tried to trick her into going on a date with a girl. "It was a good thing my friend was able to talk me out of it, since I found out later that several homophobes were waiting for me there," she said. Than on top of that Russia is enacting anti-gay laws that will further hurt the LGBT community in that region. Also, another example of how bad homophobic behavior is affecting the teenage youth is when Artyom Reutov, a 15-year-old from the city of Veliky Ustyug, in the north of Russia, said his teachers were openly homophobic, suggesting that LGBT should be exiled or given compulsory medical treatment. Now, obviously you can tell from the passages so far that there is a serious problem at hand here. There are lives being threatened, oppressive laws being made, and malicious actions being accepted by authorities that are not helping these PEOPLE. They are not "gay" or "fags", they are PEOPLE like you and me and they should be treated the same as anybody else even if they are gay or lesbian. Please read this article it is extremely eye-opening and the sad part is that it is 2013 and discrimination as serious as this is still alive.