An excellent article about how the Orlando shooting gives Russia a perfect chance to back out, without losing face, of the medieval, small-town homophobic dead end into which the Kremlin has driven it.
The author quite rightly reminds us: we lived perfectly well without homophobia during Putin’s first and second terms. The issue barely existed in the public sphere; it certainly was not something that defined political positioning.
It was imposed on society entirely as a matter of political engineering, and now there is a good opportunity to loosen that knot:
But of course, none of that is going to happen.
Public, demonstrative homophobia is the only thing that gives the Kremlin grounds to talk about some supposed Russian conservatism and the “decline of Europe.”
This mythical conservatism shows up nowhere else.
Let’s look at a conservative’s agenda:
Divorces. We certainly do not have fewer of them than the West. Here are UN statistics for 2010–2014 — our divorce rate is consistently enormous. The country’s political leadership also has plenty of divorces, and unofficial “second families” among officials are practically commonplace.
Abortions. We have far, far more of them. According to the UN, in 2010 we had the highest abortion rate in the world — 37.4. There are no political forces seriously advocating abortion restrictions. The issue is not discussed in any political debate. Even the Russian Orthodox Church does not speak out very strongly on it.
Guns. They are restricted in Russia so heavily that even the most liberal American liberals would choke with envy.
Church attendance. According to the latest Interior Ministry data, 2.5% of the population goes to church at Easter, the main Christian holiday. That is a laughably small number. In Europe, let alone the United States, far more people attend church regularly.
Migration. The main migrant-sending countries are on a visa-free regime. There is not even a whiff of conservatism there.
Alcohol and substances. There is hardly anything to say here: the whole country gets drunk and is proud of it. In St. Petersburg, drinking is the thing to do. Getting wasted is the main form of recreation, and it is a social norm.
So that very “moral decline,” in the eyes of a right-wing conservative Christian, has arrived in Russia, not in Germany and certainly not in the United States, where tens of millions of citizens put on their best pair of church shoes every Sunday.
If you described the social order of modern Russia to any famous conservative thinker of the past, whose quotes people so love posting on social media, he would instantly declare Russia the staging ground for the coming of the Antichrist.
A godless, immoral state where lying, theft, and hypocrisy have been elevated into virtues and turned into principles of government.
That is it: homophobia is the only thing keeping us afloat. All of this “conservatism” has been poured into it.
Yes, only 1% of the population observes Great Lent by all the rules, but if “those perverts” come out for a parade, we will sure show them a thing or two. Under police protection, naturally.
Without state-sponsored homophobia, there will not be the slightest chance of claiming that “we are a conservative country,” which serves as the justification for the next step: “therefore we are against the West.”
It will be impossible either to condemn or to forget the state’s homophobic policy.
To do that, the whole mechanism of public mobilization would have to be fundamentally changed. TV talk shows would have to start discussing not the bearded woman from Austria supposedly threatening our destruction, but the assets of Vladimir Ivanovich Yakunin or Yuri Yakovlevich Chaika and how they were acquired. Who would go for that now?
After all, while the public is busy discussing the bearded woman and the plan to fight her, it is so convenient to keep signing billion-ruble contracts for one another.