But those who opposed the priests and those who cheered them agree that gay rights-an issue, until now, seen as marginal by most Georgians-has become a proxy for a larger conflict.Īs I looked through videos and photographs of the attack, I spotted a familiar bearded face in the crowd of angry anti-gay protesters: the excommunicated Orthodox priest Basili Mkalavishvili. Some changed their location settings to Iran. “A Georgian Taliban has been born,” read status updates of other Georgians on Facebook.
