Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday banned the LGBT+ movement for “extremism”. Homosexuals and those who defend their rights are now exposed to prosecution and prison sentences. For Vladimir Putin, the LGBT+ community, which the Russian president depicts as an internal enemy, symbolizes the “decadent values” of the West which would seek to destroy the Russian nation. Interview with Véronique Nahoum-Grappe, anthropologist and ethnologist.
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The ax fell on Thursday, November 30. The Russian Supreme Court went so far as to ban the “international LGBT+ movement” for “extremism”. This is the latest episode in the war waged by Vladimir Putin’s regime against LGBT+ people, in the name of preserving traditional family values and with the support of the Orthodox Church. The Russian president portrays them as internal enemies, Trojan horses of the West who threaten Russia, according to Moscow propaganda. In line with his ideas, Vladimir Putin hit the nail on the head during his State of the Union speech on February 21, asserting that in the West, in the midst of “degeneration” according to him, “sacred texts are called into question” (…) And priests are obliged to bless marriages between homosexuals.”
This decision by the Russian Supreme Court adds to the legislative arsenal already in place to repress homosexuality in Russia. Since 2013, a law has banned the “propaganda” of “non-traditional sexual relations” among minors. Expanded, this has banned LGBT+ “propaganda” in the country since last year. According to Véronique Nahoum-Grappe, anthropologist and ethnologist, specialist in wartime violence, the regime is taking a totalitarian turn in a country where, moreover, traditional patriarchal imagery is obsessed with manifestations of gender and sexual freedoms. .
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France 24: Why did the Moscow regime particularly target the homosexual community?
Véronique Nahoum-Grappe: Russia is in the process of promoting reproductive sexuality by encouraging Russian women to become fertile, while criminalizing free sexualities that are isolated from reproduction (like that of the LGBT+ community, Editor’s note). Perhaps soon preventing abortion and contraception, defining women by motherhood, condemning homosexuality are trends which demonstrate a phenomenal historical retrograde after three centuries of slow liberation of women and sexuality throughout the West.
Furthermore, what Vladimir Putin exploits is the fear and rejection of homosexuals by a population that remains religious and traditional in rural and isolated regions. When Russia bans the LGBT+ movement for ‘extremism’, it is also to seduce this electorate during the elections scheduled in the country in March 2024.
Since the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s ideology has become increasingly virilist, reactionary and violent. Moreover, as a general rule, masculinist ideologies, like that of the Moscow regime, tend to devalue women, hate their freedom, and hate homosexuality.
We notes that all totalitarian institutions or states, whether religious or not, tend to repress “illegitimate” sexuality to control all citizens. The more totalitarian the States, the more rigid the systems of domination and the more severe the repression against the free sexuality of women and homosexuals. Russia, where opponents of the regime are assassinated, where all freedoms are locked, and which invades the neighboring country, is a totalitarian country in my opinion.
Vladimir Putin’s regime is Stalinist in nature. We must not forget that he is the heir of 70 years of a virtuoso ideology in the construction of political lies, and therefore of a false reality.
Leaders do not meet in Moscow to plan the construction of roads or hospitals, but to work on the alternative reality that will allow them to serve their interests and manipulate the beliefs of the populations. With the Supreme Court’s decision, Vladimir Putin is thus exploiting hatred of homosexuals.
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What is the role of the Orthodox Church in this homophobic repression?
The ideology promoted by Moscow is increasingly religious for reasons of political domination: consent to the sacrifice of citizens (in the context of the war in Ukraine, Editor’s note) is demanded in the name of the sacred values that the Orthodox religion promotes. The gift or sacrifice of oneself within the framework of an obvious fact: that of male domination in all areas, which at once contradicts the old secular feminism of state communism. There is then a collusion between political totalitarianism and retrograde religious ideology, which tends to ask virile men – “real” men, not homosexuals who are so despised and rejected – to die for the homeland, and women, the real ones, to have children, as is currently being pushed by frenzied propaganda and economic aid in favor of motherhood.
What could be the consequences of this homophobic repression?
With these laws moving towards the criminalization of homosexuality, I fear that fierce physical repression will fall on members of the LGBT+ community. The totalitarian regime also risks accusing the slightest opponent, the slightest person who is a little dreamy, a little different, of homosexuality.
Furthermore, all the populism present in all the democracies on the planet moves in the direction of homophobic and anti-feminist repression, whatever the religion which supports them: a victory for Putinian ideology, by reinforcing them, would be a catastrophe in terms of social progress and also of civilization.
