Under recent Russian law, "gay propaganda" looks a bit something like this:

I've lived with Sasha for eight years, we love each other. He's the first and only one I've been with, and I've never regretted connecting his life to mine … no matter how bad it gets, do not give up. Live for love!

This snippet is from a letter by Andrei, 22, one of thousands posted to an online forum called "Children 404: We Exist," a year-old community for queer teens and adult allies on Russia's popular vk.com, as well as Facebook (the name comes from the online "404 not found" error code). Most posts to the site are coming-out stories, others detail battles with depression or trouble with family, and some are sweet confessions about crushes and first loves.

Last week the young journalist who launched the site, Lena Klimova, was charged with violating the country's new ban on "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations." A trial date will be set soon, and if Klimova is found guilty, and she almost certainly will be, she'll be fined and the "Children 404" page on vk.com will be shut down. On her Facebook page, Klimova described the consequences: "If it will be closed, LGBT teenagers will lose the only place where they can openly speak about themselves and receive advice they need to live. It will be a catastrophe."

This is how the work of trying to make LGBT people in Russia disappear is playing out: a bureaucratic battle against websites, against journalism, against free speech, and against storytelling. It's a battle against millions of Russians and it's a depressing spectacle to watch, even more so when Russian officialdom declares victory preemptively. In the Olympic city of Sochi the mayor recently told the BBC that his town is blessedly gay-free. Given that Sochi has historically been one of the more gay-friendly resort towns in Russia, and is home to a couple of gay bars, it's a curious assertion.

The problem with trying to disappear people who refuse to disappear is that their stories find a way of getting told. That's the case with Andrei Tanichev and Roman Kochagov, owners of a thriving gay friendly cabaret in Sochi. Andrei and Roman, along with dozens of other Russian LGBT men and women, opened up about their relationships in a new book publishing next week, in English and in Russian, called Gay Propaganda: Russian Love Stories. The book is edited by myself and award-winning Russian journalist Masha Gessen.

As Andrei told us in an interview:

We're completely open about our lifestyle. Not only our parents, but also the municipal administration is aware of who we are … right before the Olympics, they've even paid special attention to us. They call and ask whether we've had the menu translated into English, whether we've been training our staff to speak foreign languages. My mother lives with us and helps us out a lot. I told her I was gay when I was eighteen. My brother knows as well. He works at our club.

In a society where the government has made any and all positive or sympathetic portrayals of LGBT life illegal, stories like this say something elemental: we exist. To set the record straight, next week we'll be mailing copies to the mayor of Sochi as well as the Russian lawmakers who authored the "propaganda" ban. The Russian version of the book will be available as a free download for anybody who wants it, and we're working with partners to get print books to Sochi, and to cities across Russia.

There's a reason stories like this are threatening. The propaganda law comes out of a shrewd analysis by conservatives about the powerful role that culture has played in softening attitudes toward gays and lesbians. Reactionaries in Russia, and in the US, have taken note of how reporting, literature, television, theater and film have helped normalize the idea for the mainstream that yes, LGBT people exist, they're mostly just like you and me, and you probably have at least one in the family. Going after a relatively small target, like the "Children 404" online support community, may seem absurd, but it comes from an awareness that stories and portrayals and reporting change hearts and minds (or in the parlance of anti-gay activists, "recruit" vulnerable young people in to the gay lifestyle). The fact that these are young people sharing stories with each other doesn't seem to matter under the law, this kind of "propaganda" must be nipped in the bud wherever it takes root. The Russian government is waging an information war, and up to now, they're winning it.

That's why a number of the people interviewed in Gay Propaganda have chosen to leave Russia, as has my co-editor Masha Gessen, who moved her entire family from Moscow to New York last month for fear that the government may crack down even further once the Olympics come and go, with a law to take children away from gay parents. A notable consequence is an increasingly vocal emigré community of LGBT Russians in big cities like New York, many of whom have been on the front lines of protests against the Russian government or corporate sponsors of the Olympics.

But the war footing of the government has also mobilized LGBT Russians inside Russia in equally remarkable and unprecedented ways. The week after the Sochi Olympics, activists are hosting a first ever LGBT sports competition in Moscow, the "Open Games." Last week a Russian actor who had publicly called for gays to be put "all he gays alive into an oven," was slapped with a lawsuit by a prominent gay rights activist. And it's fair to assume, if the government is able to shut down the "Children 404" site, a similar service or forum will pop up in its place, getting the simple message across in one way or another: we exist.

• The sub-head on this commentary was modified on 6 February 2014.