Russia’s mixed signals on anti-gay crackdown
MOSCOW— Anyone who switched on Russian TV recently might have been forgiven for thinking the Kremlin was relaxing its hard line on gays: Images of rainbow flags and a happy same-sex couple looking adoringly at their child flashed across the screen.
But the show, with its horror film music and juddering camera work, was another swipe at the gay community — not a gust of tolerance. The force behind it is one of Russia’s top propagandists, whose programs have helped to bring criminal charges against others on President Vladimir Putin’s unofficial black list.
The primetime broadcast on state television points to the double-game the Kremlin is playing on gay rights.
To the West, Russia has sought to extend reassurances as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics that a law passed this summer banning homosexual “propaganda” does not discriminate against gays.
To its domestic audience, the government has ramped up the anti-gay rhetoric, unifying its fraying electoral base with a popular refrain of traditional values.
The TV show by Arkady Mamontov — who made his name by taking a hatchet to punk rock group Pussy Riot and other opposition activists — is the latest example of Russia’s unwillingness to back down from its legislative crackdown on gays.
Champions of the law melted away when Western outrage reached a peak over the summer — but they are now back in force on national airwaves.
Mamontov told a live studio audience that the scenes he filmed should be a warning “that we have to save the family, traditions, traditional love, or otherwise we’ll be hit by something bigger than the Chelyabinsk meteorite” that fell on Russia in February.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists filmed for the show were carefully edited to make them seem alternately corrupt, subversive, demonic or laughably inept.
Mamontov uses their stories to drive home a sinister message: Gay organizations, funded almost exclusively by money from abroad, are Trojan horses that will give the West control over Russia from within.
At the same time, Russia is trying to win back credit in the international arena ahead of the Sochi Olympics.
“There is always Russia for Russians and then Russia for the West,” said Krasovsky.
The head of the Sochi organizing committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, has assured American television audiences and members of the International Olympic Committee that there will be no discrimination against gay athletes during the Winter Games in February.
In an interview with Russian daily RBK last week, Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko repeated his support for the anti-gay law.
“Perhaps the government ought to have postponed the inclusion of a ban on homosexual propaganda in this law,” he said in the interview.