On June 30, last year, a young bank worker stood in the middle of Bauman street, the central pedestrian thoroughfare in the gleaming, oil-rich city of Kazan, with a placard that read "Freedom to the Gays and Lesbians of Russia. Down With Fascists and Homophobes."
Dmitry Isakov, 24, did not know it at the time, but he was about to earn the dubious distinction of being the first person to fall foul of a ban on promoting homosexuality that has earned Russia condemnation around the world and threatens to overshadow the Sochi Winter Olympics this February.
The encounter with the law cost him not only a conviction and a fine, but also his job – in what he says is an example of a wave of homophobic feeling the Russian government's flirtation with "family-values politics" has unleashed.
He had already had a signal of what might lie in store. » | Roland Oliphant, Moscow | Sunday, January 19, 2014
