The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Such widespread distribution of propaganda of homosexual relations exerts a negative influence on the development of a child's personality, dilutes his concept of the family as a union of man and woman, and practically creates the conditions for limiting a child's freedom to choose his own sexual preference

when he grows up.¹⁰

Clearly, only the pedophile lobby could advocate delaying the passage of the bill, which in the federal parliament was referred to as a ban on "propaganda that negates traditional family values."

On television, the debate centered not on whether "gay propaganda" should be banned but, as in the St. Petersburg city legislature, on whether this measure would be enough to protect the children.

It is not enough to fine gays for propaganda to teenagers. We need to ban blood and sperm donations by them, and if they should die in a car accident, we need to bury their hearts underground or burn

them, for they are unsuitable for the aiding of anyone's life.¹¹

This was one of the country's best-known television hosts, speaking at the beginning of an hour-and-a-half special on the largest state television channel. The show was structured as a debate, or a mock court: two opponents and three witnesses on each side, all of them famous and all of them straight. It also so happened that

everyone on the ban-the-gays side was an ethnic Russian while their opponents were two Jews, a Georgian, and an American citizen, the old dissident Ludmila Alekseeva. The pro-ban side rehearsed the proud history of anti-homosexuality laws of the twentieth century. Both Stalin and Hitler persecuted gays, both saw them as probable spies, and both saw them as bringing moral decay to their armies. Anti-gay laws, it seemed, were an attribute of strong state power. A priest on the pro-ban side pointed out that it is indeed easier for an intelligence agency to recruit a homosexual, so the perception of gays as spies was rooted in fact. No wonder West Germany kept the ban, in the form in which the law had been redrafted under Hitler, even after the war—it was sound policy. But Russia had foolishly rushed to get rid of its sodomy ban as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed.

"They are unable to reproduce," said Dmitry Kiselev, the famous TV host and the leader of the pro-ban team. "This forces them to steal children from the healthy majority." Gay propaganda was a tool of this theft.

A lawyer on the pro-ban side read out the Constitutional Court's definition of "propaganda of homosexuality": "information that can cause harm to the physical or spiritual development of children and create in them the erroneous impression of social equality of traditional and nontraditional marital relations." In other words, the ban was explicitly meant to enshrine second-class citizenship in law.

The anti-ban side tried valiantly, but reason was helpless against demagogy. Nikolai Svanidze, a historian and also a prominent television personality, who led the anti-ban team, tried saying that all this talk of homosexuality was a maneuver to draw attention away from important issues.

"Are you saying that children are not an important issue?" the pro- ban side erupted. "We are talking about children! Our children!"

In his closing statement Kiselev said, "This is a time when we especially need to protect the children we have borne. We all want them to be loved, to live a long time, and to bring us the joy of grandchildren. Sexual minorities have a different plan."

Svanidze asked the audience to "imagine that your very own child has a nontraditional sexual orientation. Will you love him less? Will

you want him to be bullied?"

Svanidze's vote counter, which had been ticking slower than Kiselev's all along—viewers could call in to vote for one or the other throughout the show—stopped dead. Russian television viewers were not willing to imagine that they had a gay child. Svanidze's side lost, 7,375 votes to 34,951.

Gays were shaping up to be the perfect scapegoat: they were spies, they were bad for the army and dangerous to children, and whatever acceptance they had gained was a mistake made in 1993, under pressure from the West. Banning the gays, or at least shutting them up, was a shortcut to health and power, a rebuke to the West, and a guarantee of a populous and healthy nation.

Still, when the bill lingered in parliament, when there had been no vote on it half a year later, Lyosha convinced himself that it might not pass.