Finally, another guest decided to stick up for the country’s homosexuals: “We must remember,” he said, “that as a rule gay people are very talented.”

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Talk shows are never a good mirror of society, but in this case the participants’ sentiments reflect real conversations in Russia: Only 16 percent of Russians told the Pew Research Center that homosexuality should be accepted, the lowest number among the European countries surveyed.

The country’s 2013 law against “gay propaganda” has prompted protests and boycotts and doodles. Activists are now urging International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach to make sure that no future Olympic host country harbors discriminatory policies against homosexuals.

It's tempting to chalk up Russia’s anti-gay push to pure hate. But the fears of the Let Them Talk audience hint at one of the most important roots of anti-gay legislation in Russia. Though some Russian extremists may want to literally extinguish gays, the law itself reflects an arch-conservative view of sexuality, particularly when it comes to children, that has gained traction there in recent years.

Pew

Throughout the fallout over the anti-gay law, Russian leaders have maintained that its only goal is to safeguard youth. The law itself only prohibits airing so-called “gay propaganda” around minors.

“Please do not touch the kids,” Dmitry Kozak, the Russian deputy prime minister overseeing the Olympics, said when asked about the law ahead of the winter games. Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin simply said: “Just leave kids alone, please.”

During the debate over the measure, conservative Russian policymakers regularly conflated homosexuality with pedophilia and its effects on children: "Children maimed by pedophiles jump out of windows, they take their own lives. Pedophilia is an attempt on a child's life!" cried one St. Petersburg lawmaker when a similar ban there passed in 2012.

And in a recent proposal, Russian legislators suggested broadening the law against “gay propaganda” to include all kinds of “propaganda” of sexual relations in front of minors, including a ban on “depicting or promoting sex” in front of children.

It’s true that protecting children makes a convenient excuse for all sorts of legalized prejudice, but Russia’s obsession with instilling traditional sexual mores goes back decades. In more recent years, a small, vocal group of conservative activists, many of whom are aligned with the Orthodox church, have been doing everything from shouting down proposals for sex education in schools, to pushing for restrictions on gay rights, to supporting the crackdown on protest collectives such as Pussy Riot.

To this day, Russian schools have no sex ed to speak of. No textbooks mention the word “condom,” and abortion is still one of the most common forms of birth control. Russia's children's ombudsman said last year that Russian teens can learn everything they need to know about love and sex from Russian literature.

Russian teens get information about contraception and STDs from search engines, or if they’re lucky enough to live near one, from a scattering of standalone “youth clinics” that operate independently of schools, according to Peter Meylakhs, an associate professor at the Internet Studies Lab in St. Petersburg’s Higher School of Economics and a research fellow at the Center for Independent Social Research.