Should Democratic Society Judge Russian Anti-gay Propaganda Law?

The International democratic society does not have a right to judge the anti-gay propaganda law in the Russian Federation based on an insufficient interpretation of the law and media exaggerations. On the 30th of June, 2013 the Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a document that defines the spread of non-traditional sexual orientation propaganda among children to be illegal. The law happened to be heavily criticized by gay international communities and governments of various democratic countries who supposed that the law puts an immense pressure on human rights. Thus, a large number of Internet articles claimed that the new remark on children’s rights created a draconian atmosphere for Russian gay society. For instance, The New York Times article's headline “Russia has Declared War on Gays and their Allies” by Harvey Fierstein, implies the idea that the Russian government is constantly trying to capture all of the members of gay society, which is far from the truth. Such headlines provide an enormous negative impression about the Russian internal policy within the international political arena. Apparently, the international democratic society does not have a clear image of what was done concerning gay propaganda in Russia. It proves that people who lack knowledge of the law and cultural values of Russian society cannot condemn anti-gay propaganda law and confuse human rights in the Russian Federation.

Historically Russian attitudes towards an LGBT society have being varied on different stages of the country’s development. There are three major time periods to be discussed: the Russian Empire (commonly known as Tsar Russia), The Soviet Union and The Russian Federation. Speaking about Tsar Russia, Karlinsky (Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of California) stated that homosexuality happened to be considered normal. He mentions that society had a tendency to be tolerant to homosexuality until 1716, when the Empire passed tsar Peter’s code which prohibited sex between two active-duty soldiers. Later, in the middle of the1800s with the reign of Tsar Nicholas, the law was extended to a point when none of the male individuals in the country was allowed to have anal sex. However, it is known that Russia did not proceed to such extreme activities as jailing or sending homosexuals to the labour camps. The well-know writers such as Mikhail Kuzmin and Marina Tsvetaeva never really attempted to conceal the homoerotic issues in their works (Horne, Overbo, Levitt Franeta 88). The Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, along with destroying monarchy, spread the idea of non-prohibited same sex relations in society. Thus, the Soviet Union became the second nation after France, which allowed sodomy to be in the country. It is known that there were several gay leaders in the Communist Party who were perfectly tolerated among the rest of the communists until the 1930s (Horne, Overbo, Levitt, Franeta 89). Although, the regime remained stable for 70 years, the attitude to homosexuality has been changed significantly. When Josef Stalin gained leadership, the country was put under pressure, due to the agricultural 5-years plan, which was supposed to improve the national economy. Thus, every social deviance that interfered with the economy such as prostitution, alcoholism and social parasitism was aimed to be eliminated. For example, prostitutes and homeless people, who were supposedly not able to raise the economic level of the country, were meant to be excluded from working society. Sexuality was also criticized as a distractor from the “great national goal” to achieve economic stability, since people devoted a certain amount of time on sexual expression and family life. Homosexuality, started to be especially punished (by sentencing with up to 5 years of hard labour), because men were meant to be the major force of conquering the crisis (Horne, Overbo, Levitt, Franeta 89). This repressive campaign made Soviet people be generally unaware of sexuality which made homosexual relations to be an “unmentionable sin”. Every single issue connected to sexuality in the mass media, in the literature and art works, in the psychiatric and medical institutions was erased (Horne, Overbo, Levitt, Franeta 89). After the Soviet Union fell apart, the new President Yeltsin legalised homosexuality in sovereign Russia. Till today the LGBT community has been enjoying the entire range of human rights on the same level with the rest of the society, which provides a complete freedom for sexual orientation to all citizens. Nonetheless, the recently passed anti-gay propaganda law confused the idea of human rights in the Russian Federation and within the international democratic society.

To understand why the law was passed by the Russian government, it is important to refer to the potential causes of the issue. First of all, there have been around seven attempts to promote homosexuality in Russia by organising so-called gay prides in the following years Moscow Pride 2006-2010. All of them suffered from public criticism and state prohibitions. The RT (Russian Telegraph) polls illustrate that 87 per cent of Russians are strongly against holding regular parades in Russia and only 23 per cent of the poll participants believe that gay people have a right to demonstrate their point of views publicly. Another concern to be referred to is that the majority of people in Russia are religious. It is known that 41% of Russians belong to Orthodox Christianity and 6,5% consider themselves to be Muslims. Nether of these religions accept same-sex relations which means that nearly a half of the population is against legalizing homosexual marriages and annual gay prides in Russia. Orthodox Christians tend to follow the ideas of their patriarch Kirill, thus it is crucial to pay attention to his speech after July’s liturgy in the Red Square's Kazan Cathedral (Manson). He said, “This is a very dangerous apocalyptic symptom, and we must do everything in our powers to ensure that sin is never sanctioned in Russia by state law, because that would mean that the nation has embarked on a path of self-destruction” (Manson). This statement clearly shows the general Christians’ attitude towards homosexuals. As for the general attitude to LGBT in the Russian Federation, according to Pew Research, 74% of Russians are sure that homosexuality should not be accepted (Wike, Horowitz and Simmons 1). Russian citizens still keep the negative perception about homosexuality due to Stalin’s past repressions, yet the law took its place because of the more objective reasons such as protecting the children’s rights and the rights of heterosexuals.

It is common knowledge since the law’s approval, there has been a large number of articles published that demonstrated negativity towards it. Quite a few of those state that the anti-gay propaganda law has been the most oppressive for the entire period of the post Soviet regime (Aravosis). In the majority of such articles you may find the information that gay protestors are regularly jailed and heavily beaten by the police officers which is actually far from what is done to them. The most extreme official penalty can be a fine of up to 100,000 roubles for committing the spread of propaganda via media channels (Luhn). As for physical violence, in most cases gay people receive injuries, because of the uncontrolled nationalistic criminals (HRW). But this leads to a different research concerning the police efficiency which is outside of the scope of this paper. Another fear that took place in the foreign discussions is that gay people in Russia are basically forced to live with their sexual orientation. To exclude this false belief it will be crucial to see what the actual law 436-0 says, ”Propaganda is the act of distributing information among minors that is aimed at creating nontraditional sexual attitudes, makes nontraditional sexual relations attractive, equates the social value of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations, or creates an interest in nontraditional sexual relations” (Innokenty). As can be seen the law is focused on anti-gay propaganda among children. There is not a word that states the homosexuals are banned to have a sexual orientation they desire. LGBT community literally has the entire human rights that are offered. The only exception is the promotion of same-sex relations between two same-sex individuals among children. Although, the law suggests purportedly strict measures, there are still thousands of virtual gay communities that operate perfectly in the Russian social network Vkotakte (or VK). Homosexuals can chat there, post all sorts of sexual content in pictures and videos, arrange meetings and do all the activities that are widely accepted in the virtual world. Regarding real life, all LGBT members have the right to express themselves in the way they wish by doing any kind of job, leisure activity or building a relationship with a person they adore. Once more, the only exception to be considered is that gays are not allowed to spread same-sex behavior in the areas where children can possibly perceive this behavior and unconsciously imitate it. Moreover, homosexuals are also partly protected by certain social institutions. For example, there happened to be a significant offense towards gays in the personal blog of a well-known political journalist Nikolay Troitsky, who was later fired from his working place for posting extremely intolerant ideas about The Berlin gay pride (Khazan). Troitsky wrote in his blog, “ I hope and believe that this kind of filth will never rear its head in Russia. No amount of toleration is enough- against your will, you think of some sort of powerful bomb that would only kill gays. Honestly, if these perverted creatures would just die, the world would be a lot cleaner” (Khazan). To be more precise, a professional writer was fired for posting his own ideas in his personal blog, which has no connections with his working sphere. Thus, gays receive protection in society.

As for the purposes of the law, there are three of them which I find to be relevant. Firstly, the law is supposed to elaborate the children’s security code which includes a variety of violations in the Russian Federation. From the government’s point of view, children will have the starting point of traditional family and while growing they are able to learn about different sex relations and decide whether they associate themselves with the LGBT society. Secondly, Russian government believes that religion is an irreplaceable part of the society and the feelings of religious people should be tolerated with respect. Thirdly, as it was already proved, the vast majority of the Russian population is against organizing LGBT annual prides and letting gay individuals to spread the agenda of same-sex relations. It is clear that, the government is trying to minimize the discontent of the citizens who find public homosexual exposure to be unattractive.

Apparently, the Russian anti-gay propaganda campaign cannot be judged on the basis of non-authoritative opinions and inadequate law knowledge. Apart from that, If the LGBT community considers itself to be equal to the rest of society, then it should also respect the view of the majority. Furthermore, it is an incompetent idea to assume that gay society is a group of individuals who share the same opinion. There was a situation on radio talk show Ekho Moskvy in May 2013, when a gay person Andrey actually opposed the actions of the pro gay community. He explains, “Alekseyev (lawyer and gay-rights activist) and those like him have done much more for the discrediting of the LGBT movement than all the homophobes together” (Luhn). There is also another opinion by a gay activist Polina Andrianova. She states “It’s not enough to just come out on the street and demand our rights. They will just see it as we want to show off our sexuality” (Luhn). It must be considered that not all members of the LGBT community have the same perception of how to express personal sexual orientation. Many of those do not find attending gay parades to be an effective way of sending the message to society. Moreover, if a person is confident in his personal sexual orientation, there is no need for this person to recklessly demonstrate it in public. It is very arguable that, for example, the government would be actually open to the idea of organizing heterosexual parades, where people could tell how great is to have a sexual contact with the opposite gender. Sexual life has always been intimate in Russia; thus, the country is constantly preserving it. To conclude, the Russian mentality does not simply allow promoting any aggressive views publicly and homosexuality happened to be one of those.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 758