“This is not about imposing any kind of sanctions against homosexuality,” Mr. Putin said, defending the propaganda law at a news conference in June. “This is about protecting children.”
He added: “The law does not in any way infringe on the rights of sexual minorities. They are full-fledged members of our society and are not being discriminated against in any way.”
Gay rights advocates disagree, saying the law is vague and can be used to arrest anyone who appears to support gay rights.
American rights groups, backed by athletes like Blake Skjellerup, a speed skater, and Greg Louganis, the gold medalist diver, are leading efforts to pressure Russia and the International Olympic Committee, including the vodka boycott and a petition signed by more than 300,000 people.
Some, like Stephen Fry, a British comedian who is gay, are urging a boycott of Sochi, while others want protests there to avoid punishing athletes.
Critics say Russia’s repression of gay rights is part of a pattern that also includes a tightening of pressure on civil society groups, and steps to limit foreign influences — all seemingly out of sync with Russia’s push to host international events, like the recently completed 2013 World University Games in Kazan and the international track and field championships now under way in Moscow.
Beyond Sochi, Russia will hold the World Cup in 2018 and is bidding for the World Expo in 2020. Asked if the gay rights issue might derail the bid, a spokeswoman for the deputy prime minister, Arkady Dvorkovich, noted that Russia was competing with Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where homosexuality is illegal.
Russian gay rights advocates said the outrage in the West was providing new energy and financial support to their still relatively young movement. It is also raising pressure, including fears of increased violence.
“It’s not only a question of the period of the Olympic Games; here, there should be no law like this,” said Kirill Kalugin, 21, who was beaten by counterdemonstrators at a gay pride event in St. Petersburg last month and then detained by the police. “I feel very offended that I am being presented as an enemy of my own people.”
Mr. Krasovsky, the fired television anchor, likened life for gay people in Russia to that in the rural America in 1989, seven years before the Defense of Marriage Act became law. He also noted that in 1987, Britain adopted a ban on providing information about homosexuality to children nearly identical to the Russian law.
Aleksandr Smirnov, 39, a freelance journalist, said he was forced to quit his job in the press office of a deputy mayor in Moscow after he was featured with more than two dozen other gay Muscovites in a special issue of Afisha magazine in February. Being gay in Russia means “you are under permanent stress,” he said.
As for gay propaganda, he said the notion was ridiculous.
“Seven years ago, I wrote a letter to my mother, explaining my position, and I tried to explain to her that this has nothing to do with the existing stereotypes,” Mr. Smirnov said. “I told her that when I was about 13, I just felt, that, you know, I like boys, just the way the boys, not gays, at this same age, started to have feelings toward girls and women. I was not seduced. I was not lured into it, provoked into it. This happened quite naturally.”
Rights advocates said that Russia was growing more dangerous for gay people. This year, there have been at least two killings motivated by antigay bias in the country, including the savage beating death in May of a young man in Volgograd who was also sodomized with beer bottles.
Mr. Smirnov said that even in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, where there are large gay populations, as well as a thriving and visible gay night life that includes several gay bars and clubs, bias was inescapable.
“If you ask gays in Moscow whether they were attacked, or insulted, practically everyone will admit that it happened to him,” he said. “We are just at the very, very beginning of the movement for the rights of gays. And this new law, you know, it seals our mouths and ties our hands and feet.”
