I hope you do realize that the situation in Russia is actually getting pretty grim right now

It's been pretty grim since 1994. That doesn't mean USSR was good, but it wasn't really so wicked at its end.

What the law says and what the Russian government are doing are very different things.

You are right in that Russian authorities do not abide by their own law. Guess what: that's a huge problem for the vast majority of Russian people, definitely not only for the gays.

You see, most of our population are hostages of our corrupt government. Corruption is everywhere, and it leads to very serious human rights violations.

If you want an example, here it is: every year, many young men are killed, tortured or driven to suicide in the so - called "conscript\" army. This "army" is more of a sadistic sect which has little to do with military training. The authorities usually turn a blind eye on this, and do everything in order to shut down investigation of these crimes.

Now this is a real human rights issue. What response have I seen to this from Western human rights groups? NULL.

Now they are suddenly preoccupied by oppression of gays in Russia.

This is a very bad angle at which to handle the problem.

Yes, there are probably a lot of hate crimes against open gays, although their scale is most likely to be overestimated by gay drama queens in other countries.

But this is a problem of law implementation, not gay rights.

Gays, like everyone, are supposed to be protected from violence by Russian law.

If corruption is defeated, and laws apply to everyone, these hate crimes will stop.

And in any case, this "oppression" fades away when compared to what is done to Russian youth in the conscript army.

Basically, today it is dangerous to be an 18 year - old man in Russia.

This is not nearly an exaggeration.

Gays are being beaten by mobs, attacked by police, thrown in jail for holding their partner's hands, some are being straight up murdered for loving who they love.

This is a strange mixture of truth and fantasy.

What you said about mobs e.t.c. happened during LGBT "protest" rallies. I certainly do not support this, and see it as another example of selective application of law.

However, gays who do not engage it "activism", are very seldom targets of hate crimes, and are never arrested by police - simply because they would have no way to justify it by law. It should be noted that, unlike gay propaganda, abuse of authority by police is a criminal offense, punishable by real jail sentences.

I live in Russia and I don't see any attacks on gays. Then, of course, I'm not interested in attending rallies.

What Russia has done is, basically, make it a crime to be gay.

In legal terms, no. Russia made gay propaganda an administrative violation, and I think this is right.

I don't think we should be choosing between two evils, but rather turn against both of them.