Thread: The views of Russians, according to the "Pew Institute". True or false?

To be homosexual - it was a crime in USSR.
And that shows how backward this country was...

Originally Posted by nulle

To be homosexual - it was a crime in USSR.
And that shows how backward this country was...

Do you mean that homosexuality is the future??

Originally Posted by Hanna

Do you mean that homosexuality is the future??

In Latvia

Originally Posted by nulle

To be homosexual - it was a crime in USSR.
And that shows how backward this country was...

Here is the timeline - decriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity in Europe (geographically) for the last 80 years:

1933 - Denmark
1942 - Switzerland
1944 - Sweden
1951 - Greece
1961 - Hungary
1962 - Czechoslovakia
1967 - England, Wales
1968 - East Germany, Bulgaria
1969 - West Germany
1971 - Austria, Finland
1972 - Norway
1973 - Malta
1977 - Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro
1979 - Spain
1980 - Scotland
1982 - Nothern Ireland, Portugal
1983 - Guernsey
1989 - Liechtenstein
1990 - Jersey
1991 - Isle of Man, Ukraine
1992 - Estonia, Latvia
1993 - Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Gibraltar
1994 - Serbia, Belarus
1995 - Albania, Moldova
1996 - Romania, Macedonia
1998 - Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina
2000 - Azerbaijan, Georgia
2001 - San Marino
2002 - Armenia

As you can see, decriminalisation of same-sex sexual activity in the whole Europe was gradual process which took a couple of centuries to be completed. Also note that in many cases age of consent for gays was higher even after that, and was equalised years later. There is no need to single out Russia (or USSR) as backward in this respect, because most European countries were equally "backward" till some year in the 20th century. Of course, there were pioneers like Belgium, France, Netherlands, Andorra, Monaco, Luxembourg and Turkey (no punishment for homosexual activity since 18th or 19th century) and Poland (homosexuality was never illegal under Polish law). Russia was neither a pioneer, nor an outsider in this process.

By the way, here is one curious thing: seems that anti-homosexual laws always targeted men only (мужеложество), whereas lesbianism was not punished by the law. Why the bias?

Originally Posted by xdns

By the way, here is one curious thing: seems that anti-homosexual laws always targeted men only (мужеложество), whereas lesbianism was not punished by the law. Why the bias?

Why the bias?

Потому что пропускать предмет размером с банану в задний проход -- это неудобно, и может быть больно, и даже вредно -- вот почему! (Because being anally penetrated by an object the size of a banana can be uncomfortable, painful, and even harmful -- that's why!)

I mean, the bias against male homosexuality was consistent with the general aversion to anal sex, which historically was sometimes used as a painful humiliation for heterosexual male soldiers who were captured and enslaved by the enemy.

And I don't know what the legal tradition was in Russia, but I know that historically, in English-speaking countries, анальный секс между мужчинами was in a special category of legal horribleness, вместе с скотоложеством (along with bestiality).

But in the English legal tradition, "минет" или "взаимо-дрочка" между мужчинами тоже составляли преступлениями, однако преступления в меньшей степени. ("Blowjobs" or "mutual wanking" between men were also crimes, but crimes of lesser degree.)

Thus, if male homosexuality was a lesser crime when there was no proof that buggery (anal penetration) had occurred, it's not surprising that lesbianism was less punished, because buggery is something that two women can do only with an artificial phallus. But in contrast, male homosexuality always fell under suspicion of possibly "leading to anal sex" or "being a temptation to buggery" even when anal sex did not happen.

So we find that for long stretches of Western history, male/male anal sex was punished very harshly, sometimes by death; while other sex acts between males (oral sex, and sometimes masturbation) were also criminalized, but the punishments were usually lighter; and the law almost totally ignored lesbianism. (Anal sex between a man and a woman was sometimes tolerated more than male/male anal -- reflecting the low status of women generally.)

In the famous case of Oscar Wilde, for example, the "Crown" prosecutors gave him two years in prison (for the crime of oral sex with other males) because they were not able to prove that he had done anal sex (which carried a prison sentence of 20 years, not 2 years!). If Wilde had lived a century earlier, he might have gotten 20+ years for минет с мужиками, but the Death Penalty for anal sex! However, British law had been liberalized a bit in the 1860s, and his case was in the 1890s.

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

предмет размером с банану

банан is a male noun in Russian
IDK if that makes it more suitable for this sentence

Originally Posted by xdns

By the way, here is one curious thing: seems that anti-homosexual laws always targeted men only (мужеложество), whereas lesbianism was not punished by the law. Why the bias?

Because in Victorian times when most of these laws were at their height women were not considered to have any sexuality at all. They certainly weren't suposed to enjoy sex. They were to lie back and think of England.

Plus to a hetrosexual man two women together is not automatically a turn off. Whereas, the thought of another man, doing that, touching them there, well, that's just icky. They know that's wrong. And men write the laws.

Originally Posted by sarah37

Because in Victorian times when most of these laws were at their height women were not considered to have any sexuality at all. They certainly weren't suposed to enjoy sex. They were to lie back and think of England.

There's some truth to that, Sarah, but the legal reality was more complicated. Anti-sodomy laws existed for many centuries before Queen Victoria came along, and to some degree they were rooted in the wording of the Bible: "If a man lies down with a man as with a woman..., Leviticus 20:13" (Note that euphemistic expression "lying down with a man" is the origin of the Russian word for sodomy: мужеложество.)

Also, the Victorian British were, in some ways, progressives on matters of sex and the law -- at least in the sense that they preferred to treat homosexuality and prostitution and other "sexual offenses" as social/medical problems that could be treated with compassionate, rational Science, instead of being condemned as sins against God.

Going back to the case of Oscar Wilde -- as I said above, he was officially jailed for oral sex with men, since the government was unable to prove anal sex.

And yet there was more to it than that: early in his trial, when the public only knew about Wilde's homosexual affairs with other upper-class gentlemen "of his own station", there was a surprising amount of public sympathy for him. Because the educated, progressive Victorian middle class (and the newspapers they read) said, basically, "Of course this is all rather disgusting, but surely it should be a private matter between individuals, and there's no reason for the Crown to treat it as a crime in our modern scientific era, etc."

But later in the trial, the prosecutors were able to prove that Wilde had been having lots and lots of oral sex with male prostitutes all around London -- and this fact outraged those very same Victorian progressives, who thought that a successful upper-class gentleman like Oscar Wilde had a duty to help educate young men of the lower classes, and not to take advantage of their poverty by paying them for blowjobs!

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

But later in the trial, the prosecutors were able to prove that Wilde had been having lots and lots of oral sex with male prostitutes all around London -- and this fact outraged those very same Victorian progressives, who thought that a successful upper-class gentleman like Oscar Wilde had a duty to help educate young men of the lower classes, and not to take advantage of their poverty by paying them for blowjobs!

This sounds a bit commie. I do realize though it's complicated due to his paying for male blowjobs, but as for "straight heads" - I wouldn't understand how someone getting a paid sexual service violates anything...