Perennial fame-seeker Tom Neuwirth scored a huge victory recently, winning the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, as his alter ego, Conchita Wurst, belting out a soaring performance of Rise Like a Phoenix. Though as the Mirror pointed out, the UK Eurovision favourite act, based upon the televoting, was Poland’s Slavic Girls’ busty milkmaid routine, though the UK’s jury of music industry professionals were unswayed by the gratuitous cleavage and hand job pantomime and universally, voted Poland’s entry dead last.
The popularity of knockers and suggestive butter-churning among the hoi polloi aside, it was the reactions from the Russian Federation that shone with an incandescence that rivaled any of the song contest’s spectacular pyrotechnics. Calling the nearly 60-year old Eurovision Song Contest “a Europe-wide gay parade,” Russian legislator, Vitaly Milonov, the author of the original St. Petersburg “homosexual propaganda” law that was extended to the entire country last year, sent a letter to Russia’s Eurovision Selection Committee urging them to not to send any performers to participate in the event, stating, among other things, “Even just broadcasting the competition in Russia could insult millions of Russians,” and “The participation of the obvious transvestite and hermaphrodite Conchita Wurst on the same stage as Russian singers on live television is blatant propaganda of homosexuality and spiritual decay.” Milonov’s solution is to have Russia cease participating in Eurovision and instead hold a Russia-only song contest, Russiavision if you will, that will celebrate and showcase “traditional values,” whatever that means.
After Wurst’s win, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party, is quoted as saying: “There’s no limit to our outrage. It’s the end of Europe,” which has to be the most hyperbolic reaction to a talent show in the history of talent shows. Russia’s losing contestant for Eurovision 2014, Filipp Kirkorov, was a bit more gracious, stating, ”It was the song that won, and in my opinion it was a beautiful song, with a beard, without a beard, a woman, a man – it is unimportant, this is a competition, a song contest.”
While arguably Ms. Wurst’s win is of little importance in the grand scheme of things, in the long run, the overreactions of the conservative elements likely helps the cause of LGBT equality more than it hurts it. Lest we become too smug about the reactions among those “backwards” types, it’s worth noting that the quest for LGBT equality and acceptance has taken a long time here in the UK, and the struggle is far from over; and in one final piece of delicious irony that will give you hope for the future, Wurst’s rendition of Rise Like a Phoenix is at the top seller on Russia’s iTunes singles chart, decisively demonstrating that conservative pols don’t necessarily speak for the masses.