We are always interested in learning something new about the people around us, even if this information is shocking. Tickling your nerves is also a good idea, if only occasionally. It is better to have the most complete information about your immediate environment, even when it comes to sensitive issues. It is not so difficult to understand how to recognize a gay person, it is more difficult to live with the information received.

Facts about homosexuality

As an introduction, it would be nice to say something about homosexuality:

• It is present in nature, characteristic of all animal species.
• In human society, homosexuality has been known since ancient times. In many cultures during certain periods it was considered the norm and was not condemned in any way.
• Many famous people did not hide their homosexuality. Some kept it a secret, but after death most secrets no longer have meaning.
• In Nazi Germany, gays were exterminated on an industrial scale. Along with Jews, communists, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
• Every tenth adult man in the world has sexual deviations. This is not just about homosexuality.
• Homosexuality was removed from the list of diseases only in the 20th century. And then, the decision is rather political.
• Homosexuality can be accompanied by a number of mental disorders. However, many representatives of sexual minorities are no different from heterosexual men in their way of thinking and appearance.

The list can be continued indefinitely, but it should give a basic idea of ​​this phenomenon.

Signs of gays: latent homosexuality

Purely theoretically, everyone's orientation and sexual preferences are a purely personal matter. No one should worry about such an intimate issue if everything happens between adults and by consent.

Curiosity, in this regard, can have far-reaching consequences. And we are talking not only about the deterioration of the living conditions of the “exposed” person. Even those who like revelations can ruin their life.

Purely theoretically, a gay man loves men, a straight man loves women. This is where the differences end. But sexual spectrum disorders do not simply arise; their “innateness” has not yet been thoroughly proven. This means that the gay man probably had some kind of traumatic experience, and some mental instability cannot be ruled out. So, first of all, you should evaluate the personality and reliability of a person, and only then ask questions of orientation.

For those who hate gays with all their hearts, there is bad news. According to Freud and the principles of self-analysis, the main reason for hatred is the reluctance to recognize one’s own homosexual nature. Latent homosexuality is a scary and difficult thing to diagnose.

How to distinguish a gay from a straight?

Among the very obvious signs:

1. A guy walks with another guy around the city, holding hands and kissing. Such a sight can be seen in big cities, but it is still rare in Russia.
2. The young man does not pay any attention to the girls, but at the same time constantly stares at members of his own sex.
3. He gets along with girls very easily, but invariably just being friends with them, without making any attempts to direct communication in a romantic direction.
4. Always avoids discussing his personal life. Completely different stories can be told from time to time.

Perhaps, only the first point gives an almost 100% guarantee of the correctness of judgment. Everything else can be explained by a dozen other reasons, if only it were a fantasy. For this simple reason identifying gays is not a rewarding task at all.

How to recognize a gay guy?

There are simply a huge number of indirect signs that may indicate that a guy is gay. But they do not give any guarantee, even a combination of several at once. But a reason to think appears when following signs:

• Takes excessive care of his own appearance. It just so happens that it is almost impossible to find an unkempt gay man; they all take the issue of their own appearance too seriously.
• Change of interests and priorities. A homosexual may have brutal hobbies, but often the vector shifts towards clothes, accessories, his own body, and art.
• Natural narcissism pushes gays to go to gyms. This doesn't mean there are a lot of gays in the gym. But the fact that the “suspect” began to engage in fitness will not stand out from the general list of suspicions.
• Excessive mannerisms. It's difficult to describe in words, but it's easier to see in the video below. Such habits may be explained by the inability to behave in society, but most likely the matter is something else.

In any case, until the person is caught red-handed, all statements will remain on your conscience. And catching in this way is a dubious pleasure.

Here is the same video from mannered gay shoe salesman:

How not to confuse gay and straight?

Sometimes an awkward mistake can occur when trying to find out the orientation of an acquaintance:

It’s not difficult to make a mistake, you need to understand this. But after such a statement, the life of the accused person will certainly change. However, in case of an error, it won’t last long. Because public censure will find another way out and fall like an avalanche on the hapless accuser.

Man is a vindictive creature, especially when he is completely “undeservedly” slandered. So the moment of personal vendetta cannot be discounted. So, more often than not, it is better to keep some conclusions to yourself and voice them only if absolutely necessary. Blackmail is also a completely ignoble thing, and even moreover, it is subject to jurisdiction.

How to recognize a gay person in an acquaintance?

There is a lot of trouble around, and your friend may also be from the “other camp.” For some, this moment does not matter at all, but for others it is fundamentally important. In fact, drunken conversations are the best way to do this kind of identification. After a certain dose of alcohol, there are practically no secrets left between people. If the interlocutor is not particularly talkative or has no desire to ruin his health with booze, you can try to guess by indirect signs:

1. Not interested in girls.
2. Most of the people around are guys. And also “suspicious”.
3. Never talks about his personal life. Or, on the contrary, it is noticeable that he is lying.
4. Pays too much attention to his own appearance. He spends a significant portion of his salary on clothes and rocking chairs.
5. Any hint or advances from the opposite sex are met with hostility, reacting too harshly.
6. She stares at guys and has photos of members of the same sex on her phone and computer.

All this should make you think that there may be something wrong with the person. If you have hostility towards gays, it is better to protect yourself from such communication. Why additional stress?

The only truly reliable way how to recognize a gay- hear his confession. Everything is like in ancient times, without confession you can’t figure it out.

Video: 5 signs that a guy is gay

In this video, psychologist Miranda and her friend Mark will talk about 5 signs of a gay man, how you can accurately recognize him:

I'll throw my two cents into the discussion of the notorious law on propaganda.

First penny.
Six months ago I saw the book by J. Nicolosi and L. E. Nicolosi “Preventing Homosexuality.” I looked through it. I was impressed. I recently flipped through it again. Check it out.
So, the authors...
They say that we all created heterosexual.
A parallel is drawn between hereditarily determined obesity and homosexuality. Thought: if obesity is hereditary, this does not mean that it is not necessary to fight against it. Is that clear?
If a boy plays with dolls, and a girl plays with cars; if the boy communicates little with his father, but with his mother a lot; if a boy bakes pies from sand and does not dig roads in it, this is a pre-homosexual child. “Michael, boys don't play with dolls. Go get the car." Have the pie broken. Take the car away from the girl!
They say that homosexuals attempt suicide more often than normal people. (How amazing! They are bullied - they hang themselves. That's primordial.) They say that homosexual teenagers actually commit suicide not because of general bullying, but because of drug use, prostitution, and committing illegal acts.
They also advise:
- the child’s father “take his son with him to the shower, where the boy can easily notice that his dad has the same masculine body as he does.” The child must take a shower with his father in order to develop a “sense of community based on anatomy”; allow a child to touch his penis (!!!).
- you need to fight with your son so that he can feel “cruel, strong and aggressive.”
– you need to touch the child: “If a father does not touch his son, the son will want to touch another man.”
They write that young men who feel that they are homosexual are likely to be unhappy, lonely, isolated from society, victims of school bullies and targets of pedophiles, will use alcohol and drugs, engage in prostitution, and some will become transvestites and transsexuals (?!) . They write: your child will be judged. It is unlikely that he will find his love. Homosexuality is a b...dstness. “You don’t want your child to be unhappy?” This thought is on every page.
I won't comment.

Second penny.
Most homophobes (I don’t like this word, but there is no other) do not know a single gay or lesbian. But this does not stop them from shouting: kill, drive to a reservation, death p...sam.
I won't comment.

Third penny.
These same homophobes are sure that gays and lesbians only (to put it more correctly) engage in promiscuous sexual intercourse - and nothing more. And they don’t even want to hear that there is some kind of love between people.
I know many others.
Here are Olya and Masha. They are over 50, and for 35 years they live together and love each other. Yes, 35 years! How many marriages last that long?
Here are Anya and Lena. We met on the Internet. Anya lived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Lena in Kaliningrad. On two different ends of the country. They came together approximately in the middle - in Yekaterinburg. They have been living together for four years. Love each other. Happy. Apart from the fact that Lena was fired from her job twice, it’s clear why.
Here are Vika and Zhenya. Vika's parents kicked her out of the house after learning that she was a lesbian and broke off all contact with her. Zhenya's parents accepted him. Vika and Zhenya have been living together for 11 years. They have a child. Goes to school. It doesn’t bother him that he has two mothers and a grandmother. Moreover, it doesn’t even bother teachers and classmates. Anything can happen. Mom-grandmother, dad-grandfather, mom-stepfather-dad, two mothers. What's wrong?
I can continue.
I didn't come up with a single story, I just changed the names.
Is there no such thing as love, just messy sex? Does he really keep these people together for several decades?..

Fourth kopeck.
I have a friend, let's call her Masha. Masha is 15 years old.
One day we were sitting with her and chatting. And she says:
– Can you imagine, our life safety teacher told us that all gays should be shot!
I almost choked.
- How?
- Like this. She told us about rape and said that children are most often raped by gays. Therefore, it would be better to take them all and shoot them.
- Uh-uh... - I don’t know what to say. – And how do you feel about this?
- Yes, it’s bad, of course! No, I myself, of course, am not like that, but I don’t understand: how can you say that you need to shoot a person who is simply not like you, not like you and loves someone else?!
Through the mouth of a baby...

Who else has pennies? Throw it up.

The law banning gay propaganda adopted in Russia has led to an explosive increase in murders and violence against people of non-traditional sexual orientation. This conclusion was reached by a candidate of sociological sciences, an employee of the European University in St. Petersburg and the Center for Independent Sociological Research. He recently published a monograph, “Hate Crime against LGBT People in Russia,” which is based on an analysis of court cases where the sexual orientation of the defendants is mentioned in one way or another. The researcher spoke about where it is dangerous to demonstrate non-traditional sexuality, why judges sympathize with gays, and Russian science considers the LGBT topic marginal.

“Lenta.ru”: In your work it is said that on average 20-35 crimes are committed against lesbians and homosexuals per year. Nationally, the numbers are not shocking.

Kondakov: We are not saying that our study presents the complete picture. The statistics are incomplete, but they give an idea of ​​trends. Today, for the police, hate crimes against LGBT people do not exist. In addition, in our work we relied on data from the most reliable, but also the most conservative source - the court. The statistics we collected are official, but unofficially summarized in the process of scientific work. And regarding the fact that the numbers do not amaze the imagination... Even when one person dies, this is a tragedy. And here dozens die just because they are gays and lesbians.

What does it mean: “information is unofficially summarized”?

Since there are practically no officially registered cases of hatred towards the sexual orientation of the victim - only two cases have been encountered in all this time - we had to look for them. We have compiled a list of keywords that judges and prosecutors usually use to refer to non-traditional sexual orientation. There are many of them: homosexuality, gay, sodomy, LGBT, etc. And then they entered these synonyms into the publicly available judicial decision search systems “Justice” and “Rospravosudie”. We collected data from 2010 to 2015.

What trend have you noticed?

If before 2013 there were on average 32 cases motivated by hatred against LGBT people, in 2015 there were already 65. There is a sharp increase in crimes in this segment. And another thing is that they started killing more.

Why do you think that aggression towards LGBT people is on the rise, and not crime in general?

If you look at the statistics of ordinary murders in Russia during this period, the figures have really increased. But not at this pace. There's a double jump right there. The trend is visible not only in official court decisions. At the same time, my team and I analyzed media reports. There has also been a serious increase in violence against LGBT people. In 2011, the press covered 51 episodes. In 2015 - about 67, in 2016 - about 85.

Can you name the cities where such crimes are committed most often?

I would not name specific regions. For example, in the Caucasus such crimes are practically not registered. But not because they don't exist. It’s just that those in charge hide information and are ashamed to talk about crimes based on sexuality. Based on data from the media, we compared different types of settlements in terms of safety for LGBT people. The safest megacities in this regard. The smaller the population center, the higher the risk for LGBT people of becoming a victim of violence. This is intuitively clear: big cities are more tolerant of diversity, including sexual diversity.

Fried the heart and ate it

On February 16, 2014, at night, while he was on, he [the accused] waited until K.A.S. will leave Z.’s household, where they previously drank alcohol together. Due to personal hostility towards the said person, which arose as a result of the latter’s proposal to commit an act of sodomy, the accused struck him about 4 times on the head with a nail puller, then cut out and took out the latter’s heart with a knife, which he fried and ate at home. He recorded this process on his phone’s video camera, accompanying it with his comments.”
(Verdict in case 2–4/2015, Volgograd).

***
“There was a small metal iron on the toilet tank, he [the accused] grabbed it and started swinging it at the man. The man began to scream and call for help, while running towards the corridor. In the corridor, he caught up with the man and hit him on the back with an iron, the man bent down, and he hit him again on the head. The man fell and hit his head on a dumbbell that was on the floor. He threw the iron on the floor and went to wash his hands. When I washed my hands, I saw that the man got up and headed towards the door. He grabbed an ashtray from the table and began hitting the man in the head. He doesn’t remember how many blows he struck, but he hit him a lot until he began to wheeze.”
(Verdict in case 1–122/2013, Moscow).

Is hatred of sexual orientation an aggravating circumstance in court?

Hatred towards a certain social group of people is indeed punished more severely in Russian legislation. But when it comes to sexual orientation, judges are uncomfortable applying this provision. Therefore, court decisions often do not mention this circumstance. However, informal acceptance of this motive can be observed through the imposition of a more severe sentence. The terms for such murders are on average a year longer than for similar ones.

Similar - what is it?

When a gay man is killed, but hatred is not the motive. For example, murders during a quarrel. Hate crimes against LGBT people are brutal. In my report I cited cases where they eat parts of their victim’s body, strangle them with bags, and rape them with combs. That is, they are doing something out of the ordinary.

Dislike for LGBT people today is becoming one of the bonds of Russian society - Orthodoxy, patriotism, traditional values ​​(read traditional sexual orientation). Are the judges really ready to quietly shake the general line?

Judges are not mechanical agents of state policy. Naturally, they have their own practices of informal resistance. The most common case is suspended sentences. In Russian courts, acquittals are rarely handed down - this is the custom. But there is also an informal practice: to punish, to recognize a criminal offense as having taken place, but not to send the person to prison, to give a suspended sentence. This can be called the resistance of judges to a system of not very fair justice. And informal recognition of the motive of hatred through stricter sentences can be called such resistance to today's political agenda.

Who is more likely to experience violence: gays, lesbians, transgender people?

Hard to tell. Most of the cases in our database operate under the general concept: “persons with non-traditional sexual orientation.” That's what judges call them. But what they mean is not clear. We are mainly talking about gay men, but it can also include bisexual and transgender men. It is very difficult to find out that the text of a court decision concerns a lesbian specifically. Judges extremely rarely use the word with the root “lesbian”; they call them “and other actions of a sexual nature.” And this definition includes everything that does not correspond to heterosexual genital contact.

Will the sexual tolerance of Russians somehow stand out from other countries?

We compared only with North America, looking at murders motivated by sexual hatred. If we take the murder index (the number of crimes per 100 thousand population - approx. "Tapes.ru"), in Russia until 2012 the level was approximately the same as in the United States. And then we began to grow sharply. In the United States, the number of such crimes has not changed. We can say that now the situation in Russia is about 2.5 times worse than in America, although not everything is good there either. Downtown New York may be safe. And in some Texas outback, they may well beat you up or kick you out of a restaurant. But even there things are better than here.

Do you attribute the increase in crimes to the adoption of a law banning gay propaganda?

Yes. So far I don't see any other reasons. The law came into force in 2013. Perhaps the increased negativity caused it to be discussed in the media. If you remember, the main channels of the country then showed pseudo-documentaries and news stories that were filled with hostility towards LGBT people. It stated in plain text that homosexuals are inferior. Therefore, some Russians decided that they needed to act - to cleanse the country of sodomites. Even entire groups of citizens have appeared who specifically unite to search for gays on various social networks, harass them, and blackmail them.

There is a theory that the number of people with non-traditional orientation is always stable - only 1-2 percent. Do you agree?

These are rhetorical structures. Now science cannot say where homosexuality comes from. There are different theories on this matter. Depending on which one you want to apply, you can specify one or another number of people who would correspond to the desired version. That is, I would not take any numbers on faith.

But can we say that the LGBT community is expanding today?

I repeat once again - how to count. Let’s say there are even fewer people identifying themselves as gays and lesbians. Because new ways of identifying oneself in society are emerging: panromantics, post-gay, intersex, etc. The spectrum of sexuality is wide and introduces new terms all the time.

The ranks of heterosexuals are also heterogeneous. There are, for example, BDSM lovers (they can be of any sexual orientation), swingers, sapiosexuals, etc. That is, people begin to recognize themselves with great nuances. But when questions are asked about the growth of the LGBT community, what they usually mean is - can the population of these people be increased through propaganda? Science gives a clear answer to this: no.

When the state puts pressure on LGBT people through laws and information resources, is this a request from society?

Rather, the state comes up with the idea that it acts at the request of society. If you look at public opinion polls, you can see that hostility towards LGBT people is growing. But what kind of public opinion are we talking about: expected answers or a clearly formed position? More about the first one. Look at how the questions themselves are formulated in the questionnaire. There are four possible answers about attitudes towards LGBT people. However, three of them are negative. Is it possible to expect an adequate result in this case?

So the question of the complete homophobia of Russian society is not so simple. There is shyness in relation to any problems of sexuality. But not necessarily hostility.

One of the conspiracy theories is the blue lobby, which is formed among high-ranking officials and politicians. Judging by the situation in the country, is this a myth?

The question is worthy of study. I don't know anything about this. It may very well be that representatives of one social group, people who see commonality with each other on some basis, will help each other. Is this possible in theory? Yes. Are there people of homosexual orientation in today's government - for sure. So, anything is possible.

Is the topic of LGBT considered marginal in the Russian scientific world?

There are practically no monographs or dissertations on this issue. There are individual scientists interested in this topic. But the works mainly concern psychology. There is little research on anthropology, sociology, or politics regarding LGBT people. Scientific grants were not allocated specifically for this issue. If you apply for funding on some social issue related to LGBT people, there is a high probability that you will not be approved, since the topic is considered impractical.

One colleague told me that the LGBT topic is not fundamental, that is, it is a private, small issue. It's strange though. The state is passing a law on this problem, and this is constantly discussed in the media. But society actually knows nothing about homosexuality in Russia: how, where, with whom, who. These issues are completely ignored. Or an ideological approach is taken to the problem. Publications appear in scientific (!!!) journals, which present the following theses: homosexuality is a sin, same-sex marriage is destroying Russia, etc. No evidence-based scientific argumentation is provided.

Why did you take up this issue? Aren't you afraid that some shadow will also fall on you as a scientist?

In the scientific field, as a researcher, I do not feel any stigma. I have been dealing with these issues for almost ten years now. Another thing is that there are some groups that have paid attention to me and write nasty things on social networks. But I’m interested in this issue, because in Russia no one is seriously involved in LGBT issues, which means that the pioneers have a lot of discoveries ahead of them.

Abroad, the scientific community also did not accept issues of non-traditional sexual relationships for a long time. How did they overcome this?

Of course, they also ignored this for a long time. Changes occurred in the 1960s-80s. In the United States, many leading universities have established departments for the study of LGBT history and sociology. Since many famous educational institutions in America are private, all this was financed by philanthropists. In European countries, these topics began to be studied at the instigation of the state. There the understanding gradually came that LGBT issues can also lead to more general issues: what sexuality is, sexual relations within society.

But in Russian science, like once in the USSR, there is no sex?

The situation in Russia is different. We have the legacy of the Soviet era, in which the social sciences and humanities had to conform to a single methodological, theoretical and political standard, that is, the party line and Marxism-Leninism. Today there is no Leninism, but the party line remains. And out of habit, scientists are still perceived as conductors of this line and servants of the state. But that's not true. The most important function of science is to critically rethink the surrounding reality, and not to search for evidence that the government is taking the right steps. But, unfortunately, we have not been able to rethink the relationship between the state and scientists.

The law banning gay propaganda adopted in Russia has led to an explosive increase in murders and violence against people of non-traditional sexual orientation. This conclusion was reached by Alexander Kondakov, candidate of sociological sciences, employee of the European University in St. Petersburg and the Center for Independent Sociological Research. He recently published a monograph, “Hate Crime against LGBT People in Russia,” which is based on an analysis of court cases where the sexual orientation of the defendants is mentioned in one way or another. The researcher told Lenta.ru about where it is dangerous to demonstrate non-traditional sexuality, why judges sympathize with gays, and Russian science considers the LGBT topic marginal.

“Lenta.ru”: In your work it is said that on average 20-35 crimes are committed against lesbians and homosexuals per year. Nationally, the numbers are not shocking.

Kondakov: We are not saying that our study presents the complete picture. The statistics are incomplete, but they give an idea of ​​trends. Today, for the police, hate crimes against LGBT people do not exist. In addition, in our work we relied on data from the most reliable, but also the most conservative source - the court. The statistics we collected are official, but unofficially summarized in the process of scientific work. And regarding the fact that the numbers do not amaze the imagination... Even when one person dies, this is a tragedy. And here dozens die just because they are gays and lesbians.

What does it mean: “information is unofficially summarized”?

Since there are practically no officially registered cases of hatred towards the sexual orientation of the victim - only two cases have been encountered in all this time - we had to look for them. We have compiled a list of keywords that judges and prosecutors usually use to refer to non-traditional sexual orientation. There are many of them: homosexuality, gay, sodomy, LGBT, etc. And then they entered these synonyms into the publicly available judicial decision search systems “Justice” and “Rospravosudie”. We collected data from 2010 to 2015.

What trend have you noticed?

If before 2013 there were on average 32 cases motivated by hatred against LGBT people, in 2015 there were already 65. There is a sharp increase in crimes in this segment. And another thing is that they started killing more.

Why do you think that aggression towards LGBT people is on the rise, and not crime in general?

If you look at the statistics of ordinary murders in Russia during this period, the figures have really increased. But not at this pace. There's a double jump right there. The trend is visible not only in official court decisions. At the same time, my team and I analyzed media reports. There has also been a serious increase in violence against LGBT people. In 2011, the press covered 51 episodes. In 2015 - about 67, in 2016 - about 85.

Can you name the cities where such crimes are committed most often?

I would not name specific regions. For example, in the Caucasus such crimes are practically not registered. But not because they don't exist. It’s just that those in charge hide information and are ashamed to talk about crimes based on sexuality. Based on data from the media, we compared different types of settlements in terms of safety for LGBT people. The safest megacities in this regard. The smaller the population center, the higher the risk for LGBT people of becoming a victim of violence. This is intuitively clear: big cities are more tolerant of diversity, including sexual diversity.

Is hatred of sexual orientation an aggravating circumstance in court?

Hatred towards a certain social group of people is indeed punished more severely in Russian legislation. But when it comes to sexual orientation, judges are uncomfortable applying this provision. Therefore, court decisions often do not mention this circumstance. However, informal acceptance of this motive can be observed through the imposition of a more severe sentence. The terms for such murders are on average a year longer than for similar ones.

Similar - what is it?

When a gay man is killed, but hatred is not the motive. For example, murders during a quarrel. Hate crimes against LGBT people are brutal. In my report I cited cases where they eat parts of their victim’s body, strangle them with bags, and rape them with combs. That is, they are doing something out of the ordinary.

Dislike for LGBT people today is becoming one of the bonds of Russian society - Orthodoxy, patriotism, traditional values ​​(read traditional sexual orientation). Are the judges really ready to quietly shake the general line?

Judges are not mechanical agents of state policy. Naturally, they have their own practices of informal resistance. The most common case is suspended sentences. In Russian courts, acquittals are rarely handed down - this is the custom. But there is also an informal practice: to punish, to recognize a criminal offense as having taken place, but not to send the person to prison, to give a suspended sentence. This can be called the resistance of judges to a system of not very fair justice. And informal recognition of the motive of hatred through stricter sentences can be called such resistance to today's political agenda.

Who is more likely to experience violence: gays, lesbians, transgender people?

Hard to tell. Most of the cases in our database operate under the general concept: “persons with non-traditional sexual orientation.” That's what judges call them. But what they mean is not clear. We are mainly talking about gay men, but it can also include bisexual and transgender men. It is very difficult to find out that the text of a court decision concerns a lesbian specifically. Judges extremely rarely use the word with the root “lesbian”; they call them “and other actions of a sexual nature.” And this definition includes everything that does not correspond to heterosexual genital contact.

Will the sexual tolerance of Russians somehow stand out from other countries?

We compared only with North America, looking at murders motivated by sexual hatred. If we take the murder index (the number of crimes per 100 thousand population - note by Lenta.ru), in Russia until 2012 the level was approximately the same as in the United States. And then we began to grow sharply. In the United States, the number of such crimes has not changed. We can say that now the situation in Russia is about 2.5 times worse than in America, although not everything is good there either. Downtown New York may be safe. And in some Texas outback they might well beat you up, throw you out of a restaurant, beat you up. But even there things are better than here.

Do you attribute the increase in crimes to the adoption of a law banning gay propaganda?

Yes. So far I don't see any other reasons. The law came into force in 2013. Perhaps the increased negativity caused it to be discussed in the media. If you remember, the main channels of the country then showed pseudo-documentaries and news stories that were filled with hostility towards LGBT people. It stated in plain text that homosexuals are inferior. Therefore, some Russians decided that they needed to act - to cleanse the country of sodomites. Even entire groups of citizens have appeared who specifically unite to search for gays on various social networks, harass them, and blackmail them.

There is a theory that the number of people with non-traditional orientation is always stable - only 1-2 percent. Do you agree?

These are rhetorical structures. Now science cannot say where homosexuality comes from. There are different theories on this matter. Depending on which one you want to apply, you can specify one or another number of people who would correspond to the desired version. That is, I would not take any numbers on faith.

But can we say that the LGBT community is expanding today?

I repeat once again - how to count. Let’s say there are even fewer people identifying themselves as gays and lesbians. Because new ways of identifying oneself in society are emerging: panromantics, post-gay, intersex, etc. The spectrum of sexuality is wide and introduces new terms all the time.

The ranks of heterosexuals are also heterogeneous. There are, for example, BDSM lovers (they can be of any sexual orientation), swingers, sapiosexuals, etc. That is, people begin to recognize themselves with great nuances. But when questions are asked about the growth of the LGBT community, what they usually mean is - can the population of these people be increased through propaganda? Science gives a clear answer to this: no.

When the state puts pressure on LGBT people through laws and information resources, is this a request from society?

Rather, the state comes up with the idea that it acts at the request of society. If you look at public opinion polls, you can see that hostility towards LGBT people is growing. But what kind of public opinion are we talking about: expected answers or a clearly formed position? More about the first one. Look at how the questions themselves are formulated in the questionnaire. There are four possible answers about attitudes towards LGBT people. However, three of them are negative. Is it possible to expect an adequate result in this case?

So the question of the complete homophobia of Russian society is not so simple. There is shyness in relation to any problems of sexuality. But not necessarily hostility.

One of the conspiracy theories is the blue lobby, which is formed among high-ranking officials and politicians. Judging by the situation in the country, is this a myth?

The question is worthy of study. I don't know anything about this. It may very well be that representatives of one social group, people who see commonality with each other on some basis, will help each other. Is this possible in theory? Yes. Are there people of homosexual orientation in today's government - for sure. So, anything is possible.

Is the topic of LGBT considered marginal in the Russian scientific world?

There are practically no monographs or dissertations on this issue. There are individual scientists interested in this topic. But the works mainly concern psychology. There is little research on anthropology, sociology, or policies regarding LGBT people. Scientific grants were not allocated specifically for this issue. If you apply for funding on some social issue related to LGBT people, there is a high probability that you will not be approved, since the topic is considered impractical.

One colleague told me that the LGBT topic is not fundamental, that is, it is a private, small issue. It's strange though. The state is passing a law on this problem, and this is constantly discussed in the media. But society actually knows nothing about homosexuality in Russia: how, where, with whom, who. These issues are completely ignored. Or an ideological approach is taken to the problem. Publications appear in scientific (!) journals, which present the following theses: homosexuality is a sin, same-sex marriage is destroying Russia, etc. No evidence-based scientific argumentation is provided.

Why did you take up this issue? Aren't you afraid that some shadow will also fall on you as a scientist?

In the scientific field, as a researcher, I do not feel any stigma. I have been dealing with these issues for almost ten years now. Another thing is that there are some groups that have paid attention to me and write nasty things on social networks. But I’m interested in this issue, because in Russia no one is seriously involved in LGBT issues, which means that the pioneers have a lot of discoveries ahead of them.

Abroad, the scientific community also did not accept issues of non-traditional sexual relationships for a long time. How did they overcome this?

Of course, they also ignored this for a long time. Changes occurred in the 1960s-80s. In the United States, many leading universities have established departments for the study of LGBT history and sociology. Since many famous educational institutions in America are private, all this was financed by philanthropists. In European countries, these topics began to be studied at the instigation of the state. There the understanding gradually came that LGBT issues can also lead to more general issues: what sexuality is, sexual relations within society.

But in Russian science, like once in the USSR, there is no sex?

The situation in Russia is different. We have the legacy of the Soviet era, in which the social sciences and humanities had to conform to a single methodological, theoretical and political standard, that is, the party line and Marxism-Leninism. Today there is no Leninism, but the party line remains. And out of habit, scientists are still perceived as conductors of this line and servants of the state. But that's not true. The most important function of science is a critical rethinking of the surrounding reality, and not the search for evidence that the government is taking the right steps. But, unfortunately, we have not been able to rethink the relationship between the state and scientists.