Russia

Dmitry Enteo pelts representatives of Moscow's LGBT community with eggs

Came across this picture without a useful caption and I wondered who these people are. I imagine that throwing eggs counts as assault or maybe even battery, at least in the USA. It's rude, but no where near as bad as hitting someone with a baton.

A little digging turned up this page where I found this bit:

When a commenter asks on his VKontakte page if he means to say that Putin will sit next to Christ's throne in Heaven, Enteo says, ‘Maybe.’ So why would something so obviously idolatrous, be put forward by a self-professed Orthodox Christian? Part of the answer lies in a tradition of Church-State relations that goes back to 4th century Constantinople. In the Byzantine Empire, the Emperor, and not the Pope, was regarded as God's steward on Earth. ‘In the nature of his body the king is on a level with all other men, but in the authority attached to his dignity he is like God,’ wrote the 6th century deacon, Agapetus, in what appears to be part political doctrine, part flattery directed at Emperor Justinian. Over a millennium later, in Russia, with its Byzantine heritage, Tsar Alexei's clerk, Ivan Timofeyev, would pen the following: ‘Although the Tsar is as a human in his essence, he is by his power equal to God, for he is above all, and none on this earth is above him.’ Popularising this idea was government policy – a 17th century Russian etiquette handbook instructs the pious to respect and fear their Tsar just as they would God.
Enteo, in other words, was putting a post-modern spin on thousand-year-old propaganda.

Which is just one more brick in the wall that keeps democracy out of Asia.

Via Knuckledraggin My Life Away