Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, recently wrote a long-winded opinion piece published on the Russian Foreign Ministry website in which he claimed that “in a number of Western countries, students learn in school that Jesus Christ was bisexual”, and further warning that “the genetic code of the planet’s key civilisations, are under attack” by western liberal democracies.
These claims are unsubstantiated. Students in Canada are not taught that “Jesus Christ was bisexual.”
This most recent push by Lavrov, as absurd as it is, fits into a clear pattern from Moscow. In 2013, the Putin regime passed an anti-LGBTQ “gay propaganda” law. The bill outlaws the promotion of LGBTQ information directed at children, but its broad application has been used to supress LGBTQ voices and activists. The law bans LGTBQ information from being broadcast on Russian TV, radio, newspapers and online. Canadian NGO Rainbow Railroad states that the law “has led to increased homophobic, transphobic and biphobic violence throughout the region.”
Furthermore, a state-sponsored campaign to hunt down gay men in the Russian republic of Chechnya was launched in 2017. Dozens of men were detained, tortured and several disappeared in the wide-scale anti-gay purge.
Lavrov’s statement is intended to reinforce Vladimir Putin’s domestic and international self-appointed position as a defender of “Orthodox values”. Warnings about the threat liberal western democracies pose to “family values” is a constant theme in the Kremlin’s information warfare against the West.
This disinformation from the Russian regime has impacts in Canada. In 2020, a Manitoba minister participated in a conference organized by a leading agent of Russian far-right “pro-family” propaganda, Alexey Komov, who is an employee of a Russian oligarch who is on Canada’s sanctions list, Konstantin Malofeev.
Canadian NGO Rainbow Railroad, led international efforts to assist persecuted LGBTQ community members escape to safety from the Russia and Chechnya and was the subject of an award winning documentary film, “Welcome to Chechnya”.
