The 2011 Moscow Pride parade is scheduled for May 28. Although it’s the city’s sixth parade, none have been legal because the city has refused to issue the organizers permits. This year, participants are approaching the permit issue differently.  Instead of calling the Parade a “political rally,” their recasting it as a “mass cultural and educational event.”

Moscow’s new Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, vows to continue the previous mayor’s ban on gay rights marches. Sobyanin’s position flies in the face of a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights calling the ban a human rights violation.

We talked about the situation for gay rights in Moscow with Nikolai Alekseev, the Moscow Pride organizer and head of the organization Gay Russia; and Chicagoan Andy Thayer, head of the Gay Liberation Network.