Gay Man Fights For His Rights

A St. Petersburg court has ruled that the Oktyabrskaya Railroad broke the law when it rejected a man’s application to work as a train conductor because he was gay, the plaintiff’s lawyer said.
The case is unusual because gays and lesbians usually find new jobs rather than challenge discrimination in court due to a social stigma attached to homosexuality. In addition, sexual discrimination in all forms is very difficult to prove in Russian courts.
The plaintiff, a 30-year-old man, appealed to the Frunzensky District Court after his application to take courses for train conductors with the Oktyabrskaya Railroad was rejected in 2003, the lawyer, Dmitry Bartenyev, said Wednesday.
The rejection came after doctors at the railroad’s clinic deemed him unfit due to a note on his military record that he suffered from a mental disorder. The mark was made in 1992, when homosexuality still retained its Soviet-era classification as a “perverse psychopathy.”
The court ruled on Sept. 20 that the clinic had violated the law and ordered the railroad to accept his application.
“The court ruled on two important issues,” said Bartenyev, who works for the Medical Disability Advocacy Center, an international nongovernmental organization.
“It declared the practice of using military data to restrict human rights is unlawful. The information on it should only be used for military registration, and not to establish someone’s health status with regard to employment.”
The court also confirmed that the plaintiff’s “perverse psychopathy” diagnosis was based exclusively on his homosexuality, and that homosexuality is not a mental disorder, Bartenyev said.
Bartenyev declined to identify his client, citing the sensitivity of sexual orientation, and said he did not wish to speak with a reporter.
Valentin Morozov, head doctor of Oktyabrskaya Railroad Clinic, said Thursday that the man was denied a job because of the mental disorder note, not his sexual orientation.
“We have instructions not to allow anyone with mental problems to do work that involves certain risks, such as being a train conductor,” Morozov said.
He said it wasn’t the clinic’s responsibility to investigate the reason behind the original diagnosis.
When the 1992 diagnosis was made, the man was registered at a local psychiatric clinic and required to undergo periodic psychiatric assessments. He was classified as being incapable of serving in the army and issued a military card with the mark “7b,” which indicated a psychopathic mental disorder.
In 2003, his name was dropped from the registry at the local psychiatric clinic, but the military refused to cancel his diagnosis and confirmed it still considered him unfit for service because of his homosexuality, which it had re-classified as “other disorders of a sexual identity,” a classification in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, Bartenyev said.
The WHO has not classified homosexuality as a mental disorder since 1992, when it issued the 10th edition of the International Classification of Diseases, known as ICD-10.
from The St. Petersberg Times