Queer couples kiss-in at Ikea

Nina and Gulia at the LGBT kiss-in protest at Ikea in Brooklyn, NY (Photo: Alexander Kargaltsev)

Nina and Gulia at the LGBT kiss-in protest at Ikea in Brooklyn, NY (Photo: Alexander Kargaltsev)

BY Huffington Post Gay Voices

A group of gay and lesbian demonstrators touched down at an Ikea in Brooklyn, N.Y. over the weekend for a “guerilla photo shoot” in protest of the Swedish company’s decision to nix an article about a same-sex couple from the December issue of the Ikea Family Live magazine, which is distributed in Russia.

“Ikea calls themselves the ‘life improvement’ store, but we decided they have some major room for improvement after they deleted a lesbian couple from the Russian version of their catalog,” Joseph Huff-Hannon, co-editor of the forthcoming book “Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories,” told HuffPost Gay Voices in an email. It’s a cause particularly close to Huff-Hannon, as his boyfriend, Artyom Matusov, was born in Moscow: “Ikea should stop insulting their LGBT customers in Russia and around the world, show some backbone, and publish the story in Russian.” Huff-Hannon organized the shoot along with Alexander Kargaltsev, a gay Russian artist and photographer who was recently granted asylum in the U.S., and Rusa LGBT co-founder Nina Long.

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