MOSCOW (AP) - The Moscow mayor's office harshly rebuffed requests for permission to hold a Gay Pride parade, saying Monday that such an event would amount to ``propaganda of dissipation.''

With various festive parades a typical sight in Moscow during holidays, the office of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said it has been flooded by requests to allow a Gay Pride parade. The latest one asked for a parade to be held on the Day of the City this fall, when various other groups march across the centerof Moscow.

Luzhkov's press service issued a stern statement saying that ``the city government will not allow holding this march in Moscow on the Day of the City or on any other day, because such demonstrations outrage the majority of the capital's population, are in effect propaganda of dissipation and force upon society unacceptable norms of behavior.''

Homosexuality was a crime punishable by prison time in the Soviet era. Gay culture grown in Moscow and other large cities in the past decade, but remains frowned upon by most of the population. Luzhkov's statement added that homosexuality ``goes against traditional moral values of most Russians, as well as the canons of the main religious confessions in the city.''

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