On October 17, the Russian Union of Publishers sent a letter to the Russian Duma expressing concern that a bill against “LGBT propaganda” could lead to the banning of many works of classic literature, including some books of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Ostrovsky and many others.
Posted at 2:00 p.m.
The proposed bill is just the latest expression of an official policy of homophobia that has been used by the Russian government for many years to promote its own legitimacy, to considerable effect.
Russia has long been one of the most openly and aggressively homophobic states in the world. Both the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church have presented LGBTQ+ activism as the quintessential symbol of Western “corruption and decadence”, against which “traditional Russian values” are seen as the only effective bulwark. Legislation passed in 2013 prohibits anything that could be construed as promoting LGBTQ+ rights to children, including any use of the rainbow symbol. Since the start of its war against Ukraine in February 2022, Russia’s exploitation of this bogus threat to justify its political goals has reached new lows.
In his very first announcement of the “special operation” against Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West of “aggressively imposing […] attitudes that lead directly to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature”.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cyril – who thrived as a KGB informant during the Soviet era – was even more explicit in portraying the invasion of Ukraine as a form of sacred resistance against an alleged LGBTQ+ threat emanating from the West. In a March 2022 sermon, he described LGBTQ+ rights as “the forced imposition of sin condemned by divine law.”
Unlike Pope Francis, whose condemnation of Russian aggression has been unequivocal, Patriarch Kirill is practically foaming at the mouth in his support of Putin’s war, even going so far as to promise total absolution of sins. for all Russian soldiers who die on the battlefield. Presumably, these sins include the rape, torture and summary execution of Ukrainian civilians. How does a so-called “man of God” justify such horrors? Because the other option – a world in which LGBTQ+ people enjoy equal rights – is apparently even worse.
Although little discussed in Western media, homophobic alarmism has been a cornerstone of Russia’s domestic propaganda campaign to garner support for its war in Ukraine. According to Russian media mogul Konstantin Malofoev, “our enemy really holds sodomy propaganda at the heart of his influence”. And as one Russian mother put it in an interview: “Of course I don’t want to see my son go to war, but it’s better than letting NATO come here and make him gay.” The Russian propaganda machine has apparently succeeded in persuading much of the Russian public to accept three fallacious claims: NATO intends to invade Russia; NATO’s main goal is to make Russian children gay; one is not born gay, but becomes so through the pernicious influence of other “corrupt” people.
I became personally aware of Russia’s connection to perceived threats posed by NATO and LGBTQ+ rights after fleeing the country in 2020, in circumstances that are chillingly reminiscent of the film’s dramatic final scene. Argo.
As I had only been conducting what I imagined to be innocuous historical research on a non-Slavic minority, I was surprised to read an article published in the Russian media shortly after my departure which accused me of being a “NATO spy”, working on behalf of the “Anglo-Saxon powers” to organize pride parades in the North Caucasus. The article warned its readers that “the first condition for recognition by the international community is the holding of gay pride parades”, a statement that the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Cyril has repeated many times since the beginning of the war.
The choice of the Russian state, in tandem with the Russian Orthodox Church, to use LGBTQ+ rights as a red button to win reflexive support among the population for their campaign of criminal warfare, has much in common with the manipulation of the abortion issue by the Republican Party in the United States. In either case, a policy that deliberately seeks to inflame the ignorant and irrational passions of large segments of the population seems to succeed in stifling science and rational discourse, and any semblance of human compassion.