Russia homophobia has little to do with religion

With the Sochi Olympics there’s a lot of talk about Russia, its values, and its place in the world, right now. Much of the negative attention given to Sochi’s accommodations struck me as rooted in the reality that anti-Russian sentiment isn’t particularly taboo, and draws upon a deep history, and only its recent nominal expiration with the end of the Cold War. As an American I take an American perspective about our interests, and Russian interests. Often they don’t align. Though sometimes, as in the case of Syria, I believe that Russia in the long run probably served our national well being, even if it was not for us that they acted as they did. More frankly I can see where Russian paranoia about Western power and interference is rooted in genuine reason. Both NATO and the EU have seem to be encircling it. Imagine if Russia was a major player in the politics of Mexico or Canada?

But perhaps more interesting that realpolitik is that Russia and the West are now diverging culturally. Or, at least their cultural divergences are just very stark at this moment. The universalist post-materialist globalist wave which began swelling out of the West has crashed up against Russia nationalism and social conservatism. The brouhaha over homosexuality during the Sochi Olympics highlights one of the major fissures. But despite these deep differences Westerners still attempt to understand Russia on Western terms (this is actually a general problem). So, for example, the assumption that contemporary Russian aversion to homosexuality is a function of the real rise in Orthodox religious affiliation over the past generation. This is wrong. Using data from the World Values Survey we can see that Russians have become more, not less, liberal about homosexuality over the past generation. Below are the results. Observe that as Russia has become more nationalistic and Orthodox, the average Russian has exhibited less avowed hostility to homosexuality.

More importantly though, what’s the relationship between religion and attitudes toward homosexuality? I used the 2005-2008 WVS question, and broke it down by religious self assessment for Swedes, Americans, and Russians. Here are the results:

As you can see there’s not a strong association between religiosity and disapproval of homosexuality in Russia. It is indeed different.