There was a time, during the first homosexual emancipation movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, that Germany, the post-Czarist and newly created state of Soviet Russia, and England were in the forefront of legalizing homosexuality. It was in many ways a truly radical movement affecting the arts, politics, and the zeitgeist of the era, much like the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s did in North America.
With the recent bill passed by the Russian Duma (Parliament) effectively criminalizing the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations", and backed by the Kremlin, an international firestorm has erupted over what many in the West see as a regressive step in the area of human and equal rights.
Adding to the reaction is Russia hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi and the concern gay and lesbian participants and spectators will face arrest or, at the very least, official harassment if they are at all open about their orientation... not that many, if any, Olympic-level athletes are or have been while competing. This issue could dramatically change that.
For several years now, queer activists in Russia have had to deal with violent right wing and Nationalist (i.e. skinhead) thugs viciously attacking them during Pride events or other gatherings and state police standing by doing nothing to prevent it or stop it when it did occur. In some instances, it was the LGBTQ leaders who would be arrested and detained.
The bill is seen by many as part of an effort to reject "Western values" and promote traditional Russian ones and as such has been heavily backed by the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia, of course, has a long history of not seeing itself as "European" and isolating itself from Europe, and not just under Soviet rule but under many of the Czars as well.
Many Russians view homosexuality as not only a sin and an aberration but, in the truest sense of the word, as a perversion. Lesbians and gay men are seen as somehow decreasing Russia’s already low birthrates and many politicians and other lawmakers believe, according to a recent Associated Press story, homosexuals should be barred from government jobs, forced to undergo "medical treatment", or be exiled. Somehow the spectre of Stalinist gulags and the horrors and deprivation of state-run psychiatric wards don’t seem to haunt them or prevent them from advocating such outrageousness.
The law is not simply about "promoting homosexuality", something many of our own socially-conservative and right wing types in Canada and the US constantly go on about when any discussion of equality rights arises. Under this law, such gatherings as Pride parades or marches are illegal. Discussion of LGBTQ issues and topics is a punishable criminal offence. Gay bashing is, tacitly at the very least, sanctioned with the victims blamed and often the ones who end up arrested - can the rounding up of gay men and lesbians be far behind? - all in the name of protecting Mother Russia from the pernicious and decadent influence of Western bourgeois liberalism. Papa Stalin would be so proud....
Russia now joins the ranks of other repressive regimes, although it has not gone so far (one is tempted to add "yet") as some like Saudi Arabia that has the death penalty for being gay, as does Iran who has actually executed homosexuals (although Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s past president, denies it was because the youths were gay, saying Iran doesn’t have any homosexuals, but rather were executed for drug running and the sodomy rape of a minor), or Uganda that is considering an anti-homosexual bill which would impose life sentences and possibly execution on those found to be gay (and possibly those found to be lesbian, although most of these laws focus on males...sort of a perverse ‘sexism-in-reverse’ dynamic going on in which it is unfathomable how women can be sexual without men involved). Kenya has a similar bill before its Parliament.
In predominately Muslim Senegal, there are reports of bodies of homosexual men, or men believed to have been homosexual, being dug up and tossed out of Muslim cemeteries. That’s some pretty creepy stuff, right there.
In Gaza, homosexuality has been declared to be punishable by death with Hamas advocating the beating, torture, beheading, and extra-judicial killing of homosexuals, all in the name of Islam, and things are not much better for homosexuals within the Palestinian Authority. Israel is unique in the region for not only its democracy but its legal protection of LGBTQ individuals and culture.
Russia is a Christian country with the Russian Orthodox Church enjoying considerable influence after years of repression, even persecution, by the Soviet system. It could be argued the Orthodox Church has regained the same level of influence and even power it had under the Czars. Sadly, it would seem the Orthodox Church in Russia has more in common with reactionary Islamism than it does with its more enlightened Western Christian brethren...and that’s saying something given our own history of church versus orientation issues.
When John Baird, minister responsible for Foreign Affairs, recently spoke out against the Russian bill, as well as the situations in both Kenya and Uganda, the socially-conservative anti-feminist and anti-choice group R.E.A.L. Women quickly accused him of "abusing" his position and promoting "special interests".
Gwen Landolt, the group’s national vice-president, accused Baird of "using an agenda that is not internationally accepted", of "intruding on the sovereign rights of independent countries", and of being "elitist" and "offensive to the Canadian grassroots political base." At the same time, just for good measure one assumes, she tossed in how "homosexual rights elitists" silence opposition and have become a ‘’tyrannical minority."
An interesting sidebar here: When Egale Canada was still based in Ottawa (now based out of Toronto), and while I served on its National board of directors, R.E.A.L. Women had their national office literally down the hall from Egale’s. Not only that, but Egale’s vice-president at the time was, coincidently, Landolt’s openly gay nephew. So, it’s not like she or R.E.A.L. Women didn’t have some opportunities for exposure to the realities of LGBTQ politics and culture. I always thought Thanksgiving and Christmas family dinners must have been very interesting... assuming he and Auntie Gwen were both invited.
While Harper’s Conservatives were never perceived as particularly ‘gay-friendly’, to their credit they are now able to set aside whatever views they may or may not hold around being gay or lesbian and come out, so to speak, on the side of democratic rights, both within Canada and internationally.
Rick Roth, spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs, has gone on record as stating Baird’s comments are not a "left versus right issue", adding:
"Canada believes that the criminalization of homosexuality is wrong, as is the suppression of fundamental rights like freedom of expression and freedom of speech. The expression of these rights should not be met with the death penalty, nor violence."
Canada, as a Western liberal democracy, has an obligation - as do all other such democracies - to challenge those nations which repress and persecute minorities. Be it publicly hanging gay men in Iran or imposing repressive laws onto otherwise law-abiding individuals simply because they are gay or lesbian in Russia.