Remember those not-so-long-ago days when the entire West considered Russia an authoritarian state that severely restricted personal freedoms?  However, if you are a member of the LGBTQA+ community in the US nowadays, the differences regarding our liberties are decreasing daily.  So much so that if you read some of the latest anti-gay pronouncements, you can be forgiven for getting confused as to which country it’s from.

In a closed-door hearing on Monday, a court in St. Petersburg, Russia, ruled in favor of the country’s Justice Ministry’s decision to brand the Russian LGBT Network, the nation’s top LGBTQ+ rights group, as an “extremist” organization.  The ruling paves the way for the group’s members to be criminally prosecuted as a threat to the nation, since Russia’s criminal code equates extremism with terrorism. The ruling is also the third recent ruling against LGBTQ+ organizations in the country.

The Russian LGBT Network — which formed in 2006 and has at least 17 chapters around the country — is best known for successfully rescuing gay people from Chechnya amid the semi-autonomous region’s years-long campaign of arrest, imprisonment, torture, and “honor killings” (all conducted with Russia’s tacit approval and feigned ignorance). Putin signed the law as part of a broader push for Russians to embrace the nation’s “traditional values.” The push has been used as a justification for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s stance against the Western multinational defense coalition NATO, which seeks to limit Russia’s military expansion in Europe.