The 1932 Russian criminal code condemned “muzhelozhstvo” or men lying with men as a criminal act punishable by exile to Siberia for up to 5 years. The police rarely arrested men for this crime against nature, since the hunger that dare not speak its name was reserved for the upper classes of Tsarist Russia, however homophobia has been deeply engrained into the national psyche and a third of the population think that homosexuals should be executed and another third call for their exclusion from society. That draconian attitude has improved since the collapse of the USSR, but gay men or boys are regularly persecuted by their countrymen.

According to www.pinknews.co.uk a Moscow teenager escaped from a rehab clinic after his traditionalist father locked him up after he came out to him aged 16.

“I’d rather have you disabled or a vegetable than gay,” the father told the son according to local Ekho Moskvy radio.

The more things change the more they stay the same.

Back in 2009 I was in Moscow during the gay protests. Thousands of cops encircled the Kremlin to prevent any demonstrations before the palace. I retreated from the chaos and sought refuge in the baroque confines of Sandunovskye Bani.

In this famed banya naked straight men were beating each other with oak branches for their health. None of them were ashamed by this act of S&M, then again there are few more profound blindnesses than hypocrisy, then again nothing more relaxing that a good whipping.

2013 and Putin is banning gay rights demonstrations.

Nothing better than putting him to the knout, which was how the rich punished the serfs in Russia.

By breaking their bones.

Times don’t change.