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In February - April 2008 I talked about current affairs
in the programme Andere Ogen by Dutch TV company BVN.
Click to watch Andere Ogen

In December 2007 - June 2008 I was a regular guest in the daily evening programme called DesmetLive by Dutch broadcaster LLINK with Dieuwertje Blok. Click to watch the VIDEOs

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WHY ARE RUSSIANS SO AFRAID OF GAY PARADE?

On May 12, the Dutch minister of Culture, Education and Science Ronald Plasterk announced his support of the decision of the Dutch Eurovision participants to boycott the final in Moscow should the Russian authorities apply violence against the local gay parade. This is possibly the first time that the Dutch government has addressed the pressing issue of homophobia in Russia in a non-Balkenende-like, i.e. outspoken manner.

The Eurovision in Moscow has indeed forced a discussion about gay rights to the surface, and even more so – it has uncovered the dreadful, primate fear of such discussion among Russian officials, the media and the common people.

Hosting a gay parade is out of the question as it would undermine the moral values of the Russian people, Moscow 's city hall stated. The moral Russian people, in their turn, made sure to get through to the interactive radio programmes and voice their arguments against the parade. ‘We don't want them to get stoned or thrown in jail, but we take no pleasure in having to witness them demonstrate, just like we have nothing against the city sewage system, but would prefer that the poop stay underground rather than spill out onto the streets', - this quote from one of the radio listeners pretty much sums it up.

It is interesting how most Russian speakers avoid naming gay citizens anything, as the Russian language (like any language being the mirror of the social processes) has no sufficient vocabulary to talk about homosexuality apart from medical terms or curses.

From the Dutch point of view, calling such immature and superstitious approach towards an important social matter ‘moral' sounds barbaric, to say the least. Even more shocking are the links often made in the Russian comments between homosexuality and ‘other sexual perversions'. No one in Holland in their right mind would ever make any connection between same-sex love and violent offenders, such as paedophiles or zoophiles. In Holland , there is a law strictly forbidding sex with animals as a form of violence against innocent living beings, and the offender will be prosecuted. In Russia , where the morality is supposedly to high to condescend to the perverse gay needs, violence against animals is common. Recently there were reports in the Russian press about a monkey that suffered multiple rapes and yet was returned to its owner, just because there was no law that would allow to confiscate the animal for its protection.

Hearing the Russian authorities appeal to morality when speaking against gay rights to me sounds like hearing some Iranian bureaucrat speaking of forbidding a woman to take active part in politics ‘for moral reasons' or some American café-owner denying access to a black client in the 1950's. I am no supporter of linear development theories, but in my view morality as compassion for the fellow citizen is a more progressive stage in the evolution of any society.

Social evolution is an endless amplification of societal strata. In that sense, the Dutch society, for instance, is very complex, with a profound system of subcultures. I have recently heard a sociologist say that the Russian society under Putin has been going the other way – towards simplification of all social classes, flatter labels and destruction of subcultures. Complex society is too unpredictable, too dangerous for the authoritarian rule, too autonomous from such rule.

Partially, the Russian homophobia can be explained by such forced simplification of the Russian society, where anything different is feared again, just like it used to be in the Soviet years. Partially, it may be feeding on the general insecurity of Russian male identity. (In Russia , the word ‘gay' is for some reason more identified with men than women).

One of the ways to simplify the social discipline has been the general militaristic tone of the Russian national identity, connecting masculine virtue to militaristic symbols. On the other hand, many Russian men lacked live role models, as they were brought up by single mothers and female teachers – there is a lack of able-bodied men in Russia , due to wars, alcoholism and poor health. In such circumstances, the surviving Russian men have been trying to cling to the stereotypical masculine (i.e. militaristic, macho) values, opposite to the modern Dutch men, for instance. That may be another reason why Russian boys have felt that gay attributes were to be feared, thus violently opposed to.

The next evolutionary step, on the contrary, would be to start opposing militaristic symbols in the upbringing of young boys – in Holland today, you will hardly see a child playing with a toy gun. Yet the Russians seem to prefer official military parades to any colourful city festivities – god forbid, linked to a subculture.

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