The American Right and Russian Right Connections

In June 2014, the Russian Parliament passed an anti-LGBTQ law that reflected the growing connections between the US and Russian religious right-wings that has also been seen in mutual support of anti-abortion laws. 

The statute, an amendment to the country’s Code of Administrative Offenses, bans “propaganda” regarding “nontraditional sexual relations among minors.” (In earlier versions of the bill, it was simply referred to as “homosexual propaganda.”) The bill’s language is so vague that it could include just about any kind of gay rights advocacy, from newspaper editorials and advertisements to public information campaigns and demonstrations. ...

The anti-gay measure is the product of a growing conservative movement in Russia spearheaded by the Orthodox Church and sympathetic lawmakers. Its goals are not only to criminalize homosexuality, but to limit access to abortion and reproductive healthcare and to aggressively promote the “traditional family” through state subsidies and other benefits. In 2011, the parliament passed a law restricting abortion access that pro-choice activists regard as the first volley in an effort to ban the procedure altogether. Clinics were required to list the potential negative side effects of an abortion—like the warning on a pack of cigarettes—in any advertisements. ...

This rising Russian social conservative movement frequently invokes the argument that pro-gay and women’s rights groups are puppets of the West, which is seeking to undermine Russian autonomy and interfere in the country’s internal affairs. At an annual meeting of journalists and academics presided over by Vladimir Putin in Valdai in September, the Russian president said that European countries had strayed from their roots by legalizing gay marriage. ...

The irony is that it is the new conservative vanguard—anti-gay, anti-abortion and pro–“traditional family”—that has most successfully cultivated the West’s financial and institutional support. Scott Lively, an extreme anti-gay campaigner, all but took credit for the new law, calling it “one of the proudest achievements of my career,” while Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, visited Moscow with much fanfare just before the new law was passed. But the language of Russia’s anti-gay and anti-abortion movement seems to borrow most heavily from mainstream evangelicals and conservative politicians in the United States and Europe. ... 

yubov Erofeeva, executive director of the Russian Association for Population and Development, a women’s advocacy group, said: “It was 100 percent clear that everything was copied from the experience of American fundamentalists and conservative circles of several European countries where abortion is forbidden or restricted severely.”

The church’s close ties with American evangelicals reflect a shift in policy. For much of the post-Soviet period, the Russian Orthodox Church held evangelical denominations at arm’s length, fearing that they would compete for influence within Russia. But as the church has consolidated its power, it has come to view the evangelical community as a partner. “The ROC realizes that the evangelical denominations are not their opponents but rather their allies in the relations between the church and the secular population,” says Olga Kazmina, a professor of ethnology at Moscow State University.  ...

“We want to promote the idea of the unity between the West and Russia on the basis of common Christian roots,” Sevastianov told Inside the Vaticanmagazine in 2009. “We believe in this alliance among traditional Christian countries…and we believe that, with a united voice, we can be a strong force against the radical secular world which has become dominant in our societies.” ...

In 2011, the World Congress of Families held its first Demographic Summit in Moscow. Established in 1997 by Dr. Allan Carlson, the WCF is an interfaith, international movement whose mission is to “restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit.” Back in 1995, Carlson was invited to speak at Moscow State University by two professors of sociology who admired his book Family Questions: Reflections on the American Social Crisis. According to Jennifer Butler in Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized, “The professors and Carlson, joined by a lay leader in the Russian Orthodox Church, came to the conclusion that what they needed was to bring together scholars and leaders from ‘newly free Europe and Russia’ to meet with leaders from the West.” The first global conference was held in Prague in 1997 and drew more than 700 participants. 

https://www.thenation.com/article/how-us-evangelicals-fueled-rise-russia...