Several years later, the “gay propaganda” law’s effects on Russian society are still toxic. In April, the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper revealed that security forces in Russia’s Chechnya region were detaining, torturing and even killing gay men en masse. One of the reasons cited by Novaya Gazeta for the crackdown was, in part, the anti-gay law.
A group of activists led by Nikolai Alexeyev, one of the plaintiffs in the ECHR’s current ruling, had been submitting petitions to hold LGBT protests in cities across Russia. The activists understood their applications would be rejected. They were actually collecting rejection letters to build a case in the ECHR against the “gay propaganda” law. Unfortunately, their petitions to hold marches in the conservative Caucasus region, where Chechnya is located, provoked significant local blowback. That appears to have led the Chechen authorities to carry out “preventative detentions” of gays.
Now Russia must pay Alexeyev and two other LGBT activists, Nikolai Bayev and Alexei Kiselyov, nearly 50 thousand euros (around $55,800) in compensation each, the ECHR ruled. The ruling cannot alter Russian legislation, but it does set a precedent for future ECHR cases against Russia over its “gay propaganda” law.
It also makes a clear statement that Russia’s position on LGBT rights is backward. In recent weeks, Taiwan’s constitutional court has legalized same-sex marriages. Ireland’s parliament elected the country’s first openly gay prime minister. Last week, even Serbia— a Russian ally and Orthodox Slavic country — appointed a lesbian prime minister.
Meanwhile, on June 18, over 2,000 Ukrainians marched through central Kiev in support of LGBT rights. Despite aggressive opposition from conservative and nationalist forces, the Kiev Pride rally went off with hardly a hitch, thanks to the efforts of over six thousand law enforcement officers. Among the Ukrainian demonstrators was a small delegation of LGBT activists from St. Petersburg.
“It is impossible to march in Russia,” activist Alexei Nazarov told The Moscow Times. “So we can only do it abroad.”