Six ideas about Russia's anti-gay laws

Recently enacted anti-gay legislation in Russia and a resulting surge of anti-gay violence has the international press reeling. Politically critical op-eds and revealing photo galleries of attacks against the LGBT community in the world's largest country continue to go viral through social media. And many in North America and Europe are calling for boycotts against the upcoming Sochi Winter Olympics and Stolichnaya Vodka in protest of Russia's increasingly repressive anti-gay culture. But will Russia heed the protests of Western activists—or politicians, for that matter? Brenda Cossman is a professor of law and Director of the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies at the University of Toronto. She argues that: - 1) These laws are part of a trend in Russia It's both surprising and not, both shocking and not. These kinds of laws banning homosexual propaganda have been popping up for quite a long time now in different Russian regions- I think there are 10 such bans- this latest one just took it to a new level: it's now a federal law and Putin has actually signed it. But there's been tremendous amounts of evidence of quite rampant homophobia in Russia for some time.