SIR IAN McKELLEN LEADS 27 NOBEL LAUREATES IN PROTESTING RUSSIA'S 'GAY PROPAGANDA' LAW

Sir Ian McKellen has joined forces with the noted chemist Sir Harry Kroto to co-write a protest letter to the Russian Government over its treatment of LGBTIs which has been co-signed by 27 Nobel prize winners.

The letter was published in full in the UK’s The Independent newspaper earlier today.

The letter is addressed to President Vladimir Putin and the Russian people and prominent Nobel laureates to sign it include the novelist JM Coetzee, geneticist Sir Paul Nurse.

According to McKellen and Kroto the letter was written to show that, ‘many senior members of the international scientific community show solidarity with politicians, artists, sports people and many others who have already expressed their abhorrence for the Russian Government's actions against its gay citizens.’

‘Protest is never easy but we hope that by expressing opposition to the new legislation it might be possible to encourage the Russian state to embrace the 21st century humanitarian, political and inclusive democratic principles which Mikhail Gorbachev worked so hard to achieve.’

In the letter Kroto says he has enjoyed ‘the tremendous friendship of Russian scientists’ during his career and would honor an invitation to return in 2014 but says that will be the last time he visits Russia unless the country’s law banning so-called ‘homosexual propaganda to minors’ is repealed.

McKellen writes in the letter about how he has been warned by the UK Foreign Office against speaking openly about his sexuality if he travels to Russia and that as a result he has had to decline invitations to attend Russian film festivals.

McKellen and Kroto have been friends since childhood.

SOURCE: GAY STAR NEWS