"We are confident that attempts to corrode traditional family values, legalize same-sex unions and drugs, give moral justification to abortions and euthanasia, promote 'the culture of death', inter-ethnic and inter-religious discord, violence, fornication, homosexuality and other vices dangerous for the individual and the society are destructive tendencies," says the final document of the forum posted on the Moscow Patriarchate website on Monday.

Also at the conference was British cleric Colin Williams, who is General Secretary of the Conference of European Churches; a curious photo with the Kommersant report shows Williams surrounded by Russian priests who are pointing excitedly at something off-camera. The caption reads:

Russian Orthodox Church members showed the drawbacks of liberal values to Secretary General of the Conference of European Churches Colin Williams (center).

The cause of the agitation is left to our imagination.

Russian church leaders have also been making statements against the right to hold gay pride parades:

[Pentecostal] Bishop Sergey Ryakhovsky, a Russian Protestant leader and a member of the Public Chamber of Russia, refused tolerance for gay parades' participants.

'The tolerance our sexual minorities mention so often, does not in reality correspond to the concept of 'right.' The fundamental human rights as formulated by the UN General Assembly in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, do not include anything like a right to vice and or a right to moral crime,' Ryakhovsky said in his statement received by Interfax on Tuesday... He also regretted that heads of European capitals 'miscall the aggressive propaganda of moral corruption "a spirit of respect of the universal human rights".'

And, as ever, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad has a predictable perspective:

'Nobody is urging to judge these poor people (gays - IF), or to discriminate against them. But the question arises, whether Churches can insist on having protection from gay propaganda, and the gay parade is such propaganda... propaganda of sin is allowed, while propaganda of religious values in multicultural societies is reduced to private life.'

According to Metropolitan Kirill, now it is time for Christians to consolidate stating their common position regarding the issue.

'Otherwise the Moslems may stay alone to defend the traditional values, and due to a number of reasons their voices will be heard better, than the voices of Christian Churches,' Metropolitan Kirill added.