Beards can protect you from being gay, according to the head of the Russian branch of a Christian church.

Metropolitan Kornily, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church, explained men should stop shaving to ‘protect themselves from homosexuality’.

He claims beards mean a man is less likely to be ‘corrupted’ by a same-sex relationship, according to The Moscow Times.

Vladmir Putin has previous backed and supported Kornily.

‘God gave us the rules: it is written that God created everyone with a beard. We can not imagine Christ or some saint without a beard. One should not oppose its creator,’ Kornily said in an interview with Russia’s National News Service.

He also goes on to explain the beard’s special status has ‘completely disappeared from the Catholic West.’

In an ironic turn of events, Putin always appears with a clean-shaven face. Kornily has not publicly commented on this.

He has no further evidence of a beard’s apparent ‘protective’ powers.

Russia’s Old Believers split from the Orthodox Church in 1666 after protesting against reforms made by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow.

Putin was the first head of state to visit an Old Believer church in 350 years when he visited the RSPC Rogozhsky spiritual center in Moscow earlier this year.