What is it with these people like Russia and Florida who think if you ban something it simply won't exist? Gay people have been around ever since there were people. Just because you pass a law doesn't mean they'll vanish.
It's about destroying those who express themselves in ways that authoritarians feel threatened by, and in doing so intimidating others into falling in line.
And we should loudly continue to compare them to those with those histories due to similarity of behavior until they change their behavior so that they will never have the chance to quietly add a similar history to their own books.
If we don't want a "gulags of Florida" chapter written in history, it's appropriate to call the behavior that would lead to one out
Florida never decriminalized same-sex relationships, it took a federal ruling in 2003 to revoke their sodomy laws. They have yet to repeal them. In my father's lifetime he witnessed a scandalous trial of two young men for sodomy while he was growing up in the area. It needlessly ruined their lives. This was still happening not long ago.
Florida isn't literally running gulags but their behavior isn't anything to be celebrated either.
General left of center demonization. This person is lamenting the pattern that will likely continue that consists of things less left than communism (in this case, socialism) being treated as equally "scary" or "nefarious" as communism, in the McCarthy era Red Scare definitions of scary/nefarious (unless I'm misreading, but that seems to be what's happening here)
I'm talking here in general... If you watch the socialist governments, they support the LGBTQ community, whereas the right governments, because they're religious don't support the LGBTQ. So, all the socialist governments like Mexico's, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, etc are in cahoots with Russia and they say because Russia is Socialist.
Yeah mostly because we’re an effective internal target that will always exist and is capable of hiding. Authoritarians notice this and declare us the cause of society’s ills to take heat off themselves.
Scapegoating minority groups is nothing new for Russia. They've done it to Jews and Kulaks and many more. LGBT groups also tend to be on the left, which far-right groups hate.
I also believe tolerance of same-sex relationships tends to change due to population pressures. Russia needs population after they needlessly sacrificed so many young men in Ukraine. They want to up their fertility rate, so they criminalize and delegitimize those who enjoy non-reproductive sex; so anyone that isn't a Kinsey 6 is coerced to find a partner of the opposite sex.