The fact is that there are some regimes where it's simply inadvisable to do this kind of stuff whether it's laudable or not and it's a naive bloke that thinks you can go knocking on the Mayor of Moscows door and say 'Oy, you banned the shirtlifters march but us shirtlifters are going to do it anyway.'
Now it wouldn't have to be shirtlifters in Moscow, it could be, oooohhh I dunno, The Russian Vegan Society, or the Mothers Union, but in a Russia under Putin, you do as you're told, when you're told or you face the consequences.
Now when you're the Mayor and you've banned a march in Moscow, whether it be that you don't like gays or you simply can't be arsed to provide the organisation that a march needs, and some uppity Westerner turns up on your doorstep with the entire media circus broadcasting to your Nation, do you blush and smile and tell him 'OK, I was wrong, you do what you want in my bailiwick, I'm just the bloke in charge,' or do you slap the little bastard down??
What would anybody on here do today, if a bunch of blokes turned up on your doorstep and said they were having an overt gay party in your front garden right now whether you liked it or not when you'd already told them no??
Exactly, let the dog off.
It's like everything else, if you don't annoy it, it won't bite you. The root of the problem here is that, like a lot of minorities, if these blokes don't get what they want, they'll play the discrimination card which might work in the UK but not in Moscow, where fundamentally, they don't give a shit about minority rights. Tatchell should have known that.