MOSCOW, December 16. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Orthodox Church considers actions by several European political leaders, who would protect ethnic minorities’ rights by ignoring the destruction of family values or sidestepping repressions on religion and believers in different countries, hypocritical, said Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.
“Those who criticize Russia’s law banning ‘homosexual propaganda’ among juniors and urge to boycott the Olympic Games in Sochi should rivet attention to the real violations of human rights, primarily the extermination of Christians in the Middle East,” Metropolitan Hilarion said.
“These European politicians don’t call for protecting Christians, who are kidnapped, killed and cut off heads. When the so-called Syrian opposition abduct nuns the public keeps silent - this is not interesting. But when Russia passes a law, which would discriminate sexual minorities (they are not banned to exist and they are deprived of rights, but they are banned to propagate their ideas among juniors), it arouses protest and irritation,” the Russian metropolitan said.
“I’m sure that in Europe there are few people who realize the disastrous effects of such policy. Of course, they look forward to Russia,” he added.
“Moral relativism prevails in Europe - this means that every person or community can set their own scale of moral values. But this scale should not be related to universal human values,” Metropolitan Hilarion said.
This ideology is tried to be imposed to the society that lead to the violation of the rights of people who confess any religion or who wish to follow traditional values of moral, he said.