A Russian Orthodox priest has claimed that the brightly colored soccer shoes worn by the Russian men’s national soccer team during the FIFA World Cup were a “homosexual abomination.”
This comes only a few months after the deputy prime minister of Russia asked gay people, “please do not touch the children” when coming to the Sochi Winter Olympics in February.
The Russian priest, named Alexander Shumsky, wrote in the Russian People’s Line, a Christian website, that soccer players wearing green, yellow, pink or blue shoes were promoting the “gay rainbow,” according to The Moscow Times.
“Wearing pink or blue shoes, [the squad] might as well wear women’s knickers or a bra,” said Shumsky. After the Russian team lost in the early stages of the 2014 World Cup, Shumsky stated, “therefore I am glad that they have failed and, by the grace of God, no longer participate in homosexual liberation.”
Russia, which does not have the best reputation among the global homosexual community, may or may not have realized that nearly every team in the World Cup wore brightly colored shoes, including England and Brazil.
Shumsky didn’t mention the most famous building in Russia, the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, which contains every color he condemned.