
There is, however, another reason for the war, one not often mentioned, and that reason is waved like a banner by the Russian Orthodox Church, which supports Putin and the war, which is that Ukraine permitted gay pride parades.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of that Church and sometimes referred to as the Russian Pope has divided the world into two, unreconcilable camps of nations—those that allow gay pride parades (Ukraine) and those that do not (Russia, where a Moscow court recent upheld that city’s 100-year ban on gay pride events).
This is the kind of law and order that really juices up the Patriarch. In his mind, it supersedes all other differences between nations. Democracy vs. authoritarianism, socialism vs. capitalism, rice-eaters vs. potato peelers—all the possible sources of international discord pale compare to the gay pride parade divide, according to Kirill.
It’s hardly necessary to say that the Moscow-based Pontiff is way different than the current regular Pope, who is a genial old guy who has already let gays into Heaven, where, one assumes, they can parade eternally. Kirill is much more Old Testamenty, a wrath-of-God type Pope. He dresses the part too. Maybe he hates gays because some of them have criticized his fashion choices. “I wouldn’t wear a kitchen tablecloth with a crucifix stuck through it on my head, girlfriend, but you go,” is something one might hear on Queer Eye for the Orthodox Clergy. Or “That beard that looks like the corpse of a small mammal decaying on the steppes—let’s just sacrifice it to this can of Barbasol.”
So, out there in the vasts of Russia, there is a Church that thinks that allowing gays to exist and parade the fact that they do out in the open, is a sacrilege that justifies sending teenage conscripts to shell unarmed civilians. Dead babies and demolished hospitals are the price their God demands to stomp out the sin of gayness, or at least drive it into hiding, kind of like the Soviet Union tried to abolish religion, only to find it couldn’t be done.
Same thing going to happen with gay. Count on it, Patriarch.