It strikes us as strange that events way off in those little Baltic states of Europe can take on local significance, but with a homophobic preacher like Ken Hutcherson in our back yard, what happens there does indeed affect those of us here who care in some way about LGBTQ rights.

We saw that last week when Hutcherson and his partners tried to bring to Lynnwood a group of like-minded homophobes. One of the invited guests of the conference (and we're not sure if he made it) was the Russian-speaking preacher Alexey Ledyaev who operates New Generation Church in Riga, Latvia.

And that brings us to the neighboring Baltic republic of Lithuania where the International Lesbian Gay Association (IGLA) this weekend held an annual conference on gay rights in the capital city of Vilnius. On Friday, a handful of protesters -- reportedly from the Lithuanian branch of Ledyaev's church -- gathered outside the conference.

Baltic Times offers this report on the conference:

The event is being attended by more than 250 delegates from around 40 European countries, discussing the situation of sexual minorities, their rights and tactics for promoting awareness of homosexual issues.

Among keynote speakers at the event are member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Michael O'Flaherty, British Euro MP Michael Cashman, and the Swedish ombudsman against discrimination based on sexual orientation, Hans Yttenrberg.

Organizers of the conference planned to hoist a rainbow flag in Vilnius Town Hall square for the duration of the event, but the municipality of the Lithuanian capital cited safety concerns as a reason to refuse the request.

Lithuania, along with neighboring Poland is regularly ranked among the most homophobic nations in the European Union

Juris Lavrikovs, communications officer at  ILGA-Europe, told UK Gay News what happened Friday:

“While the participants were brainstorming and conducting discussions at the morning workshops, nine protesters gathered outside the conference venue,”  [Lavrikovs said].

“These people were protesting against our conference as they believed it was “propaganda of homosexuality”.  They were holding such banners as “Go Home” and “Lithuanian will be no-gay zone”.  Some protesters were wearing t-shirts with a slogan “No to propaganda of homosexualism”.

“The protesters were reasonably peaceful and many of them engaged in conversations with the security guards and even the conference participants.

“During the coffee break some conference participants equipped with smiles took their organisation’s banners and small rainbow flags and peacefully stood opposite the protesters.  There was no confrontation, all were smiling and fascinated by the need of those nine people to come to protest against the conference.”

That sounds peaceful enough -- pretty much the picture of their organization that  Hutcherson and his cohorts tried to paint for the press last weekend at the Watchmen on the Walls conference in Lynnwood.

Lavrikovs said that conference participants discovered that the protest had been organized by New Generation Church.

“When talking to the protesters we also learned that they were from the evangelical church New Generation whose centre is based in neighbouring Latvia and which was behind huge homophobic hysteria for the last few years in Latvia,” he said.

The scene at the conference was far less peaceful early Saturday morning as hundreds of conference attendees were forced to gasp for air as smoke bombs were hurled at a nightclub where they gathered.

In its report, UK Gay News says it isn't clear that the smoke-bomb attack was directly tied to the conference, since the club had been attacked before in a similar way.

A conference organizer was also reluctant to tie the attack directly to the conference, according to a report from the German press agency in Earth Times,

"The smoke bomb was not targeted at the conference participants, but more at the venue," said Juris Latkovskis, a spokesman for a Brussels-based gay rights organization, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

 BBC News, however, makes the connection in its report as does Amnesty International which decried the attack:

Amnesty International is deeply concerned by yesterday's attacks on the gay community in Vilnius, which saw the mayor ban a rally and a smoke bomb attack on a conference, and has called on the Lithuanian authorities to act.

Amnesty International said:

'Sadly these events are not a one off. Lithuania has repeatedly failed to protect and respect the rights of their gay community.

'To persecute people for their sexual orientation is to violate their fundamental human rights.

'Amnesty International calls on the Lithuanian authorities to respect the right to peaceful freedom of assembly for all, the right not to be discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation and to actively promote respect for diversity in their country.

'The Lithuanian authorities also need to offer adequate police protection to the country's gay community.'

While the Watchmen insisted last week that they're a peaceful (if hate-filled) lot, they continued to issue their virulently anti-gay messages. The leaders of that group almost surely don't directly encourage violence, but the extraordinary intolerance that they preach is almost certain to lead to it among those who ignore the gloss of non-violence, and act instead on hatred encouraged.

[On the web: Gay Vilnius web page. Other Watchmen and Latvia posts.]

[Update: 10/29: As the conference closed on Sunday, PinkNews reports that ILGA-representatives were confident that the smoke bomb had not been directed toward the conference.

"It appears it has no direct link to our conference and the participants were not targeted," a spokesman for ILGA said.

"We learned that very similar incidents took place at this club twice prior to the conference and although we do not know exactly the reasons, most locals and the delegates believe the smoke bomb is not linked to our conference." ]