Good As You

I love our EU: "madame secretary, you are in such good shape ... [that you will outlive us all etc etc etc]"

The video seems to have been taken down, so here's a fresh link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxjtz1P3f0Y

Thanks for the share Jeremy, I almost want to transcribe and post. Has anyone done so yet on a blog, do you know?

I can't even begin to say how happy this video made me -- and it's a wonder that I didn't know about it until now.

As someone who was born in the Republic of Moldova (a part of the now-defunct USSR at that time) and lived there for a decade, before emigrating to the neighboring Romania, I can say that the LGBT minority certainly has a very hard time of it in this particular corner of the world (and the same can very-well be said for almost all of Eastern Europe, with dismally few exceptions). There is no state recognition of the community, no guarantee of equality with the rest of the country's tax-paying citizens, no protection under the law. To be honest about one's sexual orientation in this back-end of the civilized world is a very perilous thing (if not a death-sentence, as several assaults have clearly shown).

I find Max's courage in speaking up all the more touching in the context of last year's attempted Pride Parade (which ended up with several dozen members of Moldova's only LGBT-rights NGO stranded in a bus and surrounded by a crowd whose members I simply cannot describe as 'human' -- savage beasts with humanoid forms, yes, but not more than that. It still sickens me to remember those images. If there are still those who can bring themselves to actively struggle for their rights -- even while knowing that the state would do nothing and allow them to be torn to shreds (if they didn't have to deal with the international backlash that would inevitably follow) -- then some manner of change is possible, even if I'll probably be a decrepit old woman by the time things are even halfway as they should rightfully be.