Why russia hates gays

Kochergina acknowledged moral concerns about the phrasing of the questions and the selection of identities included in the survey. Started in , Soviet Man aims to document the changing social perspectives of Russian people since the fall of the Soviet Union. Over the past several years, there have also been a number of disturbing reports of state-sponsored detention, violence and torture against gay and bisexual men in Chechnya , a semiautonomous Russian region.

Russia ranks as one of the least devout countries on earth, with only 33 percent of Russians saying religion was very important in their daily life in But even though Russians aren't churchgoers in the traditional sense, most are still incredibly supportive of the Orthodox Church, which wields power both politically, as an ally of the Putin government, and as a symbol of national pride in much of the population.

Roughly 80 to 90 percent of Russians identify as Orthodox Christians, but almost none attend services even monthly. Instead, in a Russian poll on the subject , the majority of respondents said religion for them was a "national tradition" and "an adherence to moral and ethical standards," while only 16 percent said it was about personal salvation.

The Church's head, Patriarch Kirill, has been outspoken against "social ills" like alternative sexual orientations. Petersburg gay activist told PRI. It's no coincidence that the punk band Pussy Riot was sent to jail for performing in an Orthodox church, specifically. Kirill and other Church elders have also served as occasional Putin campaigners, issuing bizarre declarations that mash together Christianity and the longevity of United Russia.

Kirill has said that "liberalism will lead to legal collapse and then the Apocalypse" and referred to Putin's presidency as "a miracle. In the U. Laws have been passed, and are enforced, protecting LGBT rights. Hate crimes are prosecuted. In Russia, that is rarely the case. In their latest report on Russia, titled License to Harm , HRW finds the Russian authorities have not only "failed in their obligation to prevent and prosecute homophobic violence," but have also "effectively legalized discrimination against LGBT people and cast them as second class citizens.

The controversial measure the report singles out is, of course, Russia's "anti-gay propaganda" legislation. The law bans "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors" and was, according to HRW, one of several anti-LGBT measures adopted or proposed in Traditional gender roles fell to revolutionary ideology, and the family structure was seen as outdated, she said.

Before the revolution, Czarist Russia was hardly friendly to gays. In , homosexuality among military men was made punishable by flogging, rape and forced labor, according to Dan Healy, a professor of Russian history at Oxford University.

In , Czar Nicholas I extended the ban on male same-sex relationships to civilians. The revolutionaries threw out the Czarist legal code and drew up their own, which did not criminalize homosexuality.

It's not clear why, Healy said, but it's possible Russia's new leadership was following a tradition set by the French Revolution that dumped religion-based laws. This progressive approach to homosexuality did not last long. Joseph Stalin, who consolidated power over the s, and his secret police appointee, Genrikh Yagoda, drafted a new law penalizing homosexuals, whom they portrayed as spies and scoundrels. By , homosexuality was again illegal in Russia, with a minimum sentence of three to five years in prison.

Prison often meant the Gulag, where convicts were forced into hard labor, Healy said. Stalin's anti-sodomy law was repealed in , one of many Stalinist laws removed in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR.