From Russia, Without Love
In a few days I went from gay marriage celebrations in San Francisco to Russia, where my LGBT comrades face a sad, bigoted reality that the rest of the world is only now discovering.
I’ll call him Boris. That’s not his real name. I won’t tell you that. I don’t want to drop any hints that might reveal who he is or how to find him. If I do, he could be beaten to death in the street.
I’m calling him Boris because he’s Russian and his thickly accented baritone English reminded me of that silly Soviet “get moose and squirrel” spy character from the old “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoons.
But there’s nothing funny about the life of the real Boris. He’s gay, and he lives in St. Petersburg, Russia.
I met Boris while visiting Russia for the world finals of an elite academic competition. My husband and I flew there in late June, the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court made the historic rulings that legalized gay marriage in California and struck down much of the federal government’s discrimination against gay married couples.
We live in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood — America’s gay mecca —and had just joined the joyous revelers in the streets on the night of those rulings.
For years I’ve written about what was at stake in those cases before the court, including a column for The New York Times that shed light on the remarkable IRS tax discrimination gay couples had faced. That piece had been quoted and referenced more often than anything I’d ever written.
And having just been married myself, the rulings had personal meaning. Perhaps the tide was really finally turning in favor of gay people.
But then just before we left for Russia,that nation’s president, the increasingly autocratic Vladimir Putin, signed a new law that allows police to arrest gay or “pro-gay” tourists and detain them for 14 days, followed by expulsion. Earlier that same month Putin signed a law that equates any “gay propaganda” with child pornography. A conviction for violating that law carries a prison sentence.
The day we landed in St. Petersburg there was a rally near our hotel against these new laws. Protestors were attacked by a mob, supported by so-called religious leaders, and beaten into bloody pulps as police stood nearby. We watched news footage of the attack on the BBC as we checked into our room.
Welcome to Russia.
When we travel we usually check out the gay scenes to chat up the local members of our tribe, and I was especially interested in talking to Russian gays about the new laws. It didn’t take long for me discover that St. Petersburg has one gay bar. There’s no address. A website shows a vague map and a series of photographs of clues to follow until you eventually get to a plain gray door, no sign or number, and a buzzer to push to be allowed inside. That was too much intrigue for us, especially in light of the beatings – we figured that perhaps some in that angry mob could find the bar too.
Instead, we found our community online. We noticed that gay social networking phone apps worked in Russia, and in a few clicks I was able to engage folks there to discover which website was most popular with the locals.
I’m not going to name that website, for fear that it could be seen as “gay propaganda” and attract the attention of the authorities. But similar to sites in the United States, people post profile pages describing themselves and their interests, and whether they’re seeking new friends, relationships, or hook-ups.
Elsewhere in the world, gay men are fairly direct on these sites. Not to make anyone blush, but few details are spared – right down to the inch.
But in Russia many of the profiles seemed like anguished cries for help. Instead of being used for fun, men there just seemed to crave recognition as fellow members of the human race.
“I want to be the spoon cradled inside another spoon,” one profile said.
“I just need to be held,” read another.
They just wanted to be hugged.
Boris’ profile got my attention because he didn’t seem so desperate, wrote in English, and noted that he had traveled extensively, including recently to San Francisco. The geo-location function on the site noted that he did not live far away, so we chatted back and forth online for a while and I invited him over to meet in the lobby of our hotel.
“Is there a security guard there?” he asked.
I don’t blame him for being paranoid.
The recent targeting and scapegoating of gays in Russia has happened because Putin, needing allies, has found strange political bedfellows-of-convenience in the arms of the Russian Orthodox Church, which is violently anti-gay. It’s a church that claims to follow the teachings of the well-known pacifist Jesus Christ, and yet somehow has twisted the scriptures to the point where their priests rile up thugs intent on murdering gay people.
So much for Thou Shalt Not Kill. Nyet!
Russia has never known a pendulum that didn’t swing to extremes. It stayed in the Dark Ages for centuries later than its neighbors. As recently as a few decades ago religion was basically outlawed: during the Soviet era St. Petersburg’s landmark gold-domed St. Isaac’s church, one of the world’s largest Russian Orthodox cathedrals, was stripped of its religion and turned into the Museum of Atheism.
Since the fall of the Soviet empire, with Putin’s blessing, the church has regained power for the first time in a century. In the past the church focused its lust for hate on Jews, with grave results. In the final decades of the Czars an estimated 2.5 million Jews left Russia following a series of pogroms (genocidal persecutions) aimed at ridding the motherland of its Christ Killers.
So today Jews are mostly gone. What minority group is left for the church to demonize as outcasts and rally its hate toward? The gays. Da!
When Boris got to our hotel I greeted him like an old friend, which immediately put him and the security guard – yes, there was one – at ease. (This is the point in the story where I would normally describe Boris physically, but for his safety I won’t do that.)
We chatted, and eventually I was able to ask Boris the question that had seized me since I arrived. With everything going on, as a gay man, what was it like to live in Russia?
“It is not a problem,” he said.
I thought I had misheard him.
“Of course, I am not out to any of my co-workers. Or to any of my friends. Or to my family.” He smiled. “But it is not a problem.”
He didn’t go to St. Petersburg’s one gay bar, but he often travels to major world cities and visits their gay neighborhoods. Having to leave one’s nation in order to date didn’t seem like a life that was “not a problem,” so I pushed a little further. What about the new anti-gay laws?
“That has been wrongly reported in the west,” he said. “It is to protect children from pedophiles.”
Clearly, he was spouting the party line for a foreigner. I challenged him on that, pointing out that the laws were truly anti-gay. But I did not push back too hard. Boris, after all, is a victim of his country’s bigotry. It would be wrong to pick on him for it.
Others, however, should not be let off so easy. The next Winter Olympics will be held in Russia, and the sports minister has publicly stated that openly gay and pro-gay athletes and spectators would be arrested.
The reaction so far to all of this has been a pathetic lack of outrage. Remove the word “gay” from Russia’s new laws and replace it with that of another minority group. Like Jews. Or Blacks. Or Kurds. Or Muslims. Would the world really just shrug? Or would there be calls for boycotts? Would sponsors pull out?
My husband and I have already decided that we won’t go back to Russia as long as these laws persist. That academic competition we traveled to St. Petersburg for in June is scheduled to return to Russia next year. It seems to us that an event that bills itself as “The Battle of the Brains” should be smarter than this. Russia’s anti-gay laws happened too late to change this year’s venue, but for next year there’s no excuse.
A world championship, whether it’s the Olympics or an academic contest, should not be held in a nation where the government dictates harassment and violence towards any minority group. People like Boris should not be forced to live alone in the shadows.
“It is not a problem,” he would say.
He’s wrong.
