A gay rights activist is detained by a police officer in Moscow.
An anti-gay bill supported by the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church is on its way to being passed in Russia later this month. The bill, which would not only ban gay rights events but any public expression of homosexuality as well as any attempt to provide information about homosexuality to minors, would mark a nation-wide expansion of similar laws already in effect in a few Russian cities such as St. Petersburg.
While the Russian Orthodox Church’s involvement in the push to pass the legislation is hardly puzzling, the Kremlin’s support deserves more scrutiny. Homosexuality has been decriminalized in Russia for the past 20 years. For the Kremlin to resurrect a Stalinist-era law may have less to do with social attitudes towards homosexuality (which remain negative in Russia, with almost two thirds of the population finding homosexuality to be “morally unacceptable”) than with a more general effort to curb political dissent.
Gays, along with other minority groups and political dissidents, have recently been targeted and scapegoated in Russia for perceived challenges to “traditional Russian values.” And these values are roughly equivalent to the policies of President Vladimir Putin, according to the Kremlin. Small wonder: over the past year, gay rights groups have typically stood alongside other opposition groups in protesting Putin’s rule. Though this wave of anti-gay legislation has been seen by some as the Kremlin’s way of diverting attention from the unpopularity of the president, it also appears to be part of a larger campaign to crack down on dissent — provisions of the law, remember, ban the transmission of information and effectively limit expression.
By targeting gays, whom a third of Russians believe to be suffering from a “sickness or psychological trauma,” the Kremlin is making a safe political bet — domestically at least. The arrest, trial and conviction (and subsequent appeal denial) of feminist punk band Pussy Riot caused an international storm of protest but a much weaker response within Russia; this latest move, given the current popular sentiment on gay people, seems to be in the same tactical vein. (Note the fact that, yet again, the Kremlin and the Orthodox church appear to be using their mutually-reinforcing relationship to legitimize governmental action against dissent.) You can call the pending legislation reprehensible, in other words, but you can’t call it stupid: singling out socially vulnerable populations among dissident groups is likely a better plan for breaking the back of the opposition than a frontal assault.
