It’s become difficult for pro-gay celebrities in relation to Russia recently due the new laws banning the ‘promotion of non-traditional sexual relationship to minors’. Although Putin insists it’s not an issue and will supposedly protect youths, other more zealous lawmakers are already trying to use the laws to try and silence both gay celebs and allies, whether they’re talking to minors or not.
Now Ian McKellen has been talking about how it’s affected him, telling the Radio Times, “Imagine trying to be a gay actor, a gay anything in modern Russia?. Where to be positively oneself, to be affectionate in public with someone you love of the same gender, or to talk of that love in the hearing of anyone under 18, will put you in prison? That’s why I can’t go to Russia.”
He added he had been told by the Foreign Office that “they couldn’t protect me from those laws,” and so as a well-known gay advocate his safety could not be guaranteed there.
McKellen adds that he cannot believe this is the situation “in the land of Tchaikovsky, Diaghilev, Rudolf Nureyev — gay artists whose sexuality informed their work.”
The UK Foreign Office has recently changed its advice to travellers to Russia, warning them of “a degree of intolerance” of homosexuality, and that people should bear that in mind if they decide to go there.