More than half of Russians want to ‘liquidate’ or exclude gays
More than half of Russian citizens say they think gay people should either be isolated from society or “liquidated”.
A new poll published on Friday showed that attitudes towards gay people in Russia had hardened.
The Levada Center poll is the latest in a series, which map Russians’ views on minority groups since 1989.
As well as more than half of respondents saying they did not welcome gay people, other groups such as sex workers, homeless people and fringe religious groups have all become less welcome in the past 15 years.
One of very few groups to go the other way was disabled people, with the percentage of Russians saying disabled children should be “liquidated” having fallen from 23 percent in 1989 to 2 percent in 2015.
Russian society has in the past 26 years become less tolerant to LGBT people.
The poll found that now 21 percent of people want to see LGBT liquidated, and 37 percent said they wanted to exclude LGBT people from society.
Many have attributed the hardening of views to an anti-gay law which was passed in Russia in 2013.
The law bans the “promotion of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors, and LGBT hate crimes have increased drastically since it was introduced.
The survey polled 1,600 adults across Russia from Sept. 18-21. It had a margin of error of no more than 3.4 percent.
