Some readers of this paper �" especially those of us slightly on the older side �" might remember 22 years ago when the plight of Russia's LGBT citizens was also a big focus in our community. They might even remember the late publisher of the Bay Area Reporter , Bob Ross, joining a group of 90 diverse American LGBT activists who took a historic trip to Russia with the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in July 1991, where we met with government officials, grassroots activists, and held a joint U.S.-Russian LGBT conference and film festival in (then) Leningrad and Moscow.
Just a few weeks after our delegation flew back to the U.S., readers may also remember there was a coup attempt and days of protest in Moscow, where LGBT activists were part of the democracy movement that helped bring down those big iconic Stalin and Lenin statues, and with it the Soviet Union, ushering in a new Russia. That new Russia brought with it new freedoms and opportunities for a civil society to grow and flourish for all, including a new generation of LGBT Russians.
In those days we were calling for the repeal of the anti-gay sodomy law �" a law that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had on the books �" although in the USSR it actually landed hundreds of gay men in prison or labor camps for up to five years. With the help of then-Congressman Barney Frank and others, and together with brave Russian activists, we nudged and nudged until President Boris Yeltsin got rid of that law in a set of modernizing penal code reforms, which helped to repeal not only Russia's sodomy law, but a number of others in the former Soviet Republics as well.
Fast-forward 20 years, the Russian LGBT movement blossomed with scores of organizations, film festivals and cultural events, a thriving club scene, and even plenty of activist infighting. Also blossoming during that same period was the Russian Orthodox Church and its homophobic and heterosexist focus on the family and so-called traditional values. In the most recent years, homophobia and Russian nationalism have found an overt kinship �" both for President Vladimir Putin and Kremlin policies �" as well as in society, where anti-gay sentiments poll high among Russian citizens. A more violent strain of homophobic nationalism is also growing, leaving at least two gay men dead over the past few months.
In foreign policy, Russia leads the charge at the United Nations against progress on human rights for LGBT people, with its "traditional values" resolution. Domestically, Putin's party members proposed the anti-propaganda laws in a dozen regions before the national law was enacted in the Duma in June. These laws, as well as the lesser-known modifications to the adoption law making it illegal for same-sex parents to adopt in Russia, are all in the name of "protecting children." While we can easily see through this protection rhetoric as deliberately anti-gay measures, these legal changes are receiving large-scale public support in Russia. Homophobia is popular and even more so, it is perceived as Russian and not Western.
But taking an LGBT-only view misses a few key points about what is happening right now in Russia, including in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Sochi. This anti-LGBT campaign is occurring within a much larger crackdown on Russian civil society. Gays are an easy political scapegoat, and as such, Putin's government is test-driving some of their new repression techniques on this vulnerable community. Two of the very first nonprofit organizations charged and fined under the recent "foreign agents" law are LGBT groups in St. Petersburg �" their equivalents to Frameline and the LGBT Community Center. These two brave organizations, together with the other human rights groups and the individual leaders of those groups charged as foreign agents, are refusing the government's requirement to register as such and will likely have to close their official doors and pay large fines. Today, hundreds of non-governmental organizations have been charged under this new law, had their offices searched, or received warnings by the government not to violate this law, creating a crippling climate of fear among civil society and advocates.
The growing repression, harassment, and danger to the lives of the LGBT community groups and activists, is also growing for the many other brave advocates in Russia working on a huge range of issues, including freedom of the press and association, political reform, anti-corruption, and the abuses against those migrant workers brought in to erect the huge Olympic stadiums in Sochi on the land where people were forced to evacuate their homes without proper compensation. Focusing our community's outrage on the new anti-gay law is proving to be a catalyzing force in politics and the media. Let's keep that up. But let's also seize the attention to contextualize these abuses and call for the broader reforms needed in Russia to keep some basic level of democratic freedom for its citizens. Russian and American LGBT activists helped fight together for democratic reforms 22 years ago in Russia �" that's a gay tradition worth keeping.
San Francisco resident Julie Dorf is senior adviser for the Council for Global Equality, and founder of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.