The article said that the boy had decided to seek asylum on the grounds of his sexual orientation, and that the gay couple had guaranteed to a court that they would support him financially. The article suggested that the court made the couple his guardians, but left unclear with whom he was living.

The Russian diplomats said that they sought help from the police, but that the police declined to investigate.

The Tass article depicted the outcome as the work of a gay cabal, saying that when the bereft mother flew to the United States to plead with her son to return home, she was forced to hold the meeting in the presence of his two lawyers who were “also of nontraditional sexual orientation.”

Susan Reed, the supervising lawyer with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, who is representing the boy, declined to provide many details about the case, citing privacy concerns. But she said that the account in the Tass article was “a gross distortion of the facts and the legal process.”

The lawyer said that the boy was 17, not 16, and that he “was afraid to go home” and therefore had been put in federal custody through the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The boy, Ms. Reed said, has been placed by the government into foster care. “The sexual orientation of that foster family is irrelevant,” she said.

Ms. Reed also noted that she was married to a man and was a practicing Roman Catholic with two children, in contrast to the description of the lawyers in the Tass account.