Kate: Hello And welcome to Called to Queer, where we hold space for queer Mormon women, genderqueer, and intersex experiences. I’m Kate and my pronouns are she/they.
Colette: And I’m Colette and my pronouns are she/her.
Kate: And today we have a little bit of a different format, but we have Channing Parker here with us. Channing, do you want to introduce yourself too?
Channing: Yes. Hello everyone. I’m so excited to be back on Called to Queer. I love talking with Kate and Colette and I’m excited to be here again. So my pronouns are she/her. Thanks for having me.
Kate: Thank you for being here. All right. So we’re going to start out with some queer joy, and that we’re going to move into this episode. So Colette, what brought you queer joy this week?
Colette: So this last weekend, I held a retreat for queer [00:01:00] women who grew up Mormon and it was just an entire weekend of queer joy for me. I had no idea what to expect going in. I didn’t know all the women that had signed up and I knew the ones, the ones I didn’t knew were coming from a wide variety of backgrounds, some in mixed orientation marriages, some single, one’s engaged to another woman right now.
And we had a wide range of activity in the church, but everyone just jelled so well. And it was just such a beautiful weekend for me. And it was so nice to get away into some nice warm weather in St. George and everyone seemed to have a really good time. And I had a great time. I’ve been exhausted all week trying to recover, but it was, it was just so much queer joy, so much laughing together.
Seeing just people be able to show up as their authentic selves. It was just ultimate queer joy for me.
Kate: Nice. So exciting, Colette. Let’s unpack that first. Just [00:02:00] one second, because man, like you’ve been working so hard for this for so long. And I’m so happy that you’re able to do that and do it successfully and look forward to the next ones.
Colette: Yeah, thank you. And I appreciate your support. I know you definitely took on a bit of a heavier load of Called to Queer stuff while I was kind of focusing on that. And it was just so nice that it came together. I don’t consider myself a much of an event planner, but for my community, I’ll do it. And I’m just grateful.It turned out so well.
Kate: So everybody look out for the next, Queerly You retreats as well.
Colette: Yes, yes. Hopefully I I’m thinking in the fall sometimes. So, and I’ll give more notice this time. How about you, Kate? What was your queer joy?
Kate: It’s a weird time in Romania currently, but this week happened to be a holiday in Romania called Martisor. And it’s a celebration of [00:03:00] spring. It’s March 1st. It’s like a big, Southeastern Europe holiday where you give out these strings that are white and red, and you tie them to the trees and such.
But so for like a month, he would see all of these little booths with red and white strings that you need to purchase. Among these things are also rainbows, right? Like tons and tons of rainbows on the street everywhere. And I dressed for Martisor in rainbows and it just so happens to line up with BYU’s rainbow day as well.
So the beginning of March is the celebration of rainbows. So seeing all the rainbows has really brought me queer joy in both my home in Utah and in Southeast Europe.
Colette: Rainbows are the best and I love it the whole country celebrating BYU rainbow day without knowing it.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right, [00:04:00] Channing, you’re up!.
Channing: My queer joy actually just happened right before we hopped on to record. I was thinking about this, like before I knew that I was going to come on, I was like, oh my gosh, I don’t know what my moment of queer joy is. So I was so excited that it actually happened. So, my podcast, cohost, Elise, she and I do The Faithful Feminists podcast.
We were just recording the episode that talked about Joseph in Egypt and talked about Joseph and his coat of many colors. And Elise came across some queer interpretations of that story that indicate that Joseph’s many colored coat can also be roughly translated to a rainbow princess dress.
And so I was just very excited to hear this like flamboyant, like joyous, happy. I don’t know, interpretation of the story that traditionally has, you know, in my experience has been like very masculinized and [00:05:00] very, uh male-centered. So it’s, it was super cool. That was my moment of queer joy to just like, be able to listen to her, share that queer interpretation of a well-known Bible story and just play around with it a little bit. So it was fun. We have fun over there.
Colette: I love that so much. And yes, everyone, please go check out The Faithful Feminists, if you aren’t already,
Kate: Yeah,
Colette: That’s an awesome interpretation. I also loved the interpretation you did a while ago about Eve and Lilith. And I was like, oh my gosh, I love this so much. That was so much queer joy for me too. If you haven’t listened to that episode.
Channing: Yep, I think Judith Glasgow was the one who wrote a really lovely interpretation of that story where Eve and Lilith are lovers and we really enjoyed bringing out that story in the episode, so yeah. I’m glad you liked it.
Colette: Give me all the queer content. Let’s be real.
Channing: True that.
Kate: I think it’s important that we start out with queer joy, especially when we have such [00:06:00] a heavy topic to discuss. I think it’s important to remember that even right now in Eastern Europe that is hit with such devastation that queerness is being celebrated and queer folks from other countries who want to help queer folks in Ukraine too. So noticing these things, even in times of devastation, I think is really important for queer folks.
Colette: A hundred percent.
Kate: Today we’re going with this a little bit different format. We’re going to go straight into a topic episode and talk about how Russian and American conservatives have worked together to build a movement that’s led to Russian aggression and the invasion of Ukraine, and as a PhD candidate in Black Sea, Soviet, and Eastern European history, as well as a nonbinary Latter-day Saint living on the Black Sea in Romania, [00:07:00] I have some unique insight into these intersections of Russian aggression and LGBTQ conservative politics in the region and LGBTQ politics in the US and within Mormonism. So this is like an intersection for a lot of stuff for me. This episode has been made possible only through the reliance on many sources. As a historian, I need to just be straight up that this is about the sources and I’m getting the information from the sources, which are: newspapers -they are all sorts of things but in addition to primary sources like newspapers, there are published sources in academic journals and monographs, which is just a fancy word for books.
So please see the show notes on our website for the [00:08:00] citations and also the bibliography of these sources. And we’re honored again, to have Channing Parker join us to help navigate this episode. Channing is co-host of The Faithful Feminists. As we’ve talked about this episode aligns closely with the episode of The Faithful Feminists we did called “the Family Proclamation with Called to Queer” on December 13th, 2021. We recommend that episode as kind of supplemental listening to this episode. The stories intertwined considerably, and we see this as a sort of follow-up to that episode. So thank you for joining us, Channing.
Channing: Yes, I’m so excited. And honestly, I just wanted to say about that episode too, that it is one of our most frequently listened to episodes. People really have enjoyed listening to what both of you had to say. And I’m excited to kind of follow up with that, especially as we’re dealing with some really heavy and difficult current happenings, and a [00:09:00] big political climate in Russia and Ukraine. And so I think that this is going to be a cool conversation to kind of see how we can talk about these stories and talk about these things that are happening in the world. But then when, you know, things kind of hit the fan and things get real, we are called even more closely into studying how these stories have a real effect on our lived experience.
So Kate, thank you so much for being willing to come in and just share what you see and what you found and what you know, because I know for a lot of us, especially people in the United States, there’s a lot of confusion and a lot of like, oh my gosh, not totally sure how to navigate some of these conversations, because they can feel tricky and we may not have all the information.
So, thanks for having me. I feel special being able to be here.
Colette: No, you’re the first time we’ve brought someone back again. So congratulations. We’re very grateful for you and The Faithful Feminists, for sure.
Channing: We love [00:10:00] you.
Kate: All right. Let’s jump in.
Channing: Sweet.
Colette: All right. So one January evening in Moscow, Russia an American foreigner sat down to write in this journal. The year was 1995, just four short years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the new Russian Federation was enjoying a celebrated liberal democracy with their new president, Boris Yeltsin. The American was not there to toast Russian and liberal democracy. He was there to meet with Russian sociologists about a new project. The American Allan Carlson wrote:
Channing: ” Darmodekhin showed me a copy, in Russian translation, of my 1989 article titled ‘A pro- family income tax’, which had appeared two years ago in a social science journal. This article, he said, is having great influence among Russian Federation officials.”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09637494.2020.1796172
Colette: Carlson had met with multiple Russian professors, but Darmodekhin invited Carlson to join in a collaboration with the Moscow Research Institute for the Family. Carlson continued [00:11:00] in his diary by saying that the collaboration would include joint publications and translations in the area of family sociology, the development of a joint research project, the exchange of material, and information and the nomination of Carlson to the academic board of the Russian Research Institute for the Family.
(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09637494.2020.1796172)
(Essig, Laurie and Alexander Kondakov, 2019)
That trip in 1995 was the foundation moment of the international organization called World Congress of Families. Carlson co-founded the organization with Russian sociologist Anatoly Antonov. It has since been classified as a hate group by the Human Rights Campaign, as well as the Southern Poverty Law Center.
(https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/world-congress-families)
Kate: Three years later in 1998, Allan Carlson was made the president of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, and was toasting the second conference of the World Congress of Families, which he and Russian sociologist Anatoly Antonov had, in fact, established. The dinner and celebration took place in Salt Lake City, Latter-day Saint Apostles Dallin H. Oaks and Boyd K. [00:12:00] Packer, as well as Merrill J Bateman, the President of BYU at the time, spoke at the event, along with Carlson. The Church News reported on the event saying that quote “BYU and the Howard Center are the sponsors and co-conveners of the Congress with support from NGO Family Voice, a BYU group that participates in the formulation of United Nations policy.”
https://www.thechurchnews.com/archives/1998-11-28/looking-forward-to-congress-of-families-2-125657
Colette: So here we have Allan Carlson organizing the World Congress of Families with the Russian sociologists and somehow very prominent Latter-day Saint leadership is also a part of this?
Kate: Yeah. And all this is taking place, this relationship between Carlson, the Russian oligarchs, the Russian Orthodox Church and Latter-day Saint apostles as the Family Proclamation was being written and announced in Latter-day Saint general conference. So like let’s unpack all of this for a second.
What [00:13:00] questions do we have so far?
Colette: How has this never been my knowledge until you talked about this at my birthday party last year, Kate, and then we’re like, we need to do an episode on this and then it became highly relevant to when we’re like, okay, now we really need to talk about this, given current events.
Channing: Right, right.
Kate: Yeah. I think we focus so much on the American side of the story and we know it so well. Like, we know the Family Proclamation is part of the larger conversation in the 1994 Hawaii Supreme court case. We know about Prop 8, but we don’t know that those things were part of this larger global context.
And when I say global, I mean, global. It takes place in Africa as well, but is heavily influenced by Russian oligarchs and the Russian Orthodox Church. That piece just doesn’t quite fit together for us in the larger trajectory but those people that know the story about what was taking place in the [00:14:00] United States are going to be able to see that larger story.
Channing: That’s so fascinating to me. And it also, I think that there’s a, I mean, I have feelings on this and I think the first one is like, well, of course this is happening globally. We pride ourselves on being a globally connected church. And so why, why am I all of a sudden surprised to find out that the Family Proclamation has ties to the World Congress of Families, which has ties to Russian oligarchs and is happening outside of just the United States, even though maybe that’s the portion of the story or the slice of the pizza that I know the most about, I am disappointed but not surprised that it is much more widespread than that. And secondly, my other thought on this is there seems to be this really prevalent attitude within like general church membership that somehow what happens in the church is completely isolated from anything that’s happening in [00:15:00] the world.
This is kind of like in the world, but not of the world. And we, we see in this particular case, especially, that that’s not totally true. The World Congress of Families was created in response to LGBTQ activists and movements globally, like worldwide. And so this idea that, you know, the Family Proclamation to the World happened just, you know, out of nowhere and like, was this divinely inspired document, maybe isn’t the most accurate representation of what was happening there. And I think the same can go for, potentially, LDS general authorities involvements in this worldwide anti LGBTQ movement. So yeah, I think my feelings are disappointed, but not surprised.
Kate: Right. Yeah. So I think that it’s important for us for the rest of this episode, to keep in mind that the church is working with global organizations and Russian oligarchs to preemptively flush out [00:16:00] LGBTQ rights across the world. Like, that’s what this episode is about. That these folks are working together and they’re working in a conservative movement and it’s making a completely new world order.
This is not just like one nation versus another nation any longer. It’s not one empire versus another empire. There are global ideologies that are joining people up. And so this is just, this is a new way to think about power in the global world order.
Colette: So why would Carlson be interested in meeting with the Russian sociologists in Moscow to begin with?
Kate: Okay. So let’s get into some highlights about Ukraine. Let’s get into some of the questions that folks are having about specifically Ukraine. One of those things is nationalism. So the way that the world is ordered, currently, is into different nations. When I asked my students, please Google, how many countries there are in the [00:17:00] world.
They come up with multiple different answers. Somebody is going to say 196. Somebody’s going to say like 194. And then they’re confused by that. Like why isn’t Google giving me a straightforward answer? It’s because the world is constantly changing into these countries and developing into these sovereign nations, but the world a hundred years ago, wasn’t like that.
So I like to think about it with President Nelson. President Nelson, the prophet of the Mormon church is 97 years old. He was born in 1924, six years before him, the world looked very different than it does today. It was divided by empires, and nations weren’t really a thing. That’s not a thing till after World War I and Woodrow Wilson decides it, right?
He’s going to spread his nation ideology. So the world a hundred years ago looked very different and it looked like empire. [00:18:00] And what are those empires?
Channing: Kate, can I stop you there? Some people might not know what nationalism is. Maybe myself? I mean, I think I have an idea, but could you define it for us?
Kate: Nationalism is essentially what I said. It is the dividing the world into countries. We called them nations, but they’re really nation states. A nation is at first level an ethnic group. So this is the way it’s thought to be. This is the way that we should make a nation is to have an ethnic group in that ethnic group should have its own nation.
And that nation should then make its own sovereign state. So that’s why we call them nation states sometimes. That’s what Ukraine is right. We think of it as ethnic Ukrainians, making a nation and then making a nation state that is sovereign away from the empires that once controlled it.
Channing: Can I ask a follow-up [00:19:00] question? What is the difference or the similarities or both between nations and empires?
Kate: The difference, so an empire is made up of many different what quote, unquote nations, but really lots of different ethnic groups. And it wants to constantly incorporate different groups and different nations that’s so that like that’s the goal of empire is expansion, and mostly expansion for resources.
In the case, of Ukraine and other countries around it, nations are they all have an 19th century movement. That was to say, we want- as an ethnic group- to create a nation that represents us and keeps the empire powers at bay who have continually robbed us of our resources. Right? So part of empire it’s about resources and exploiting [00:20:00] resources in Ukraine. The resources tend to be grain and these lands were exploited for grain by multiple different empires: so the Russian empire, actually the Ottoman empire as well, were interested in this region for the grain and interested in taking advantage of groups, of people who lived there, who would work the land for that grain. So what a nation state says is no we want to be in control of our own natural resources. They are going To stay within In the nation and we get to decide how they are distributed and used so that’s what a nation does is it separates itself from these larger powers that exploited those natural resources in order to build the larger empire.
But it’s important to remember that even these ethno nations are made up of a lot of different people. It’s not just one ethnic group. [00:21:00] This is the way though that empires and nations themselves decided to structure the land, and power, and resources and governments is kind of around this idea of: we all belong to the same group and we should be in charge of our own land. The land and our own resources, and we shouldn’t be beholden to larger empires. And empires actually helped facilitate these nationalist movements. You see that in, say, the division. between India and Pakistan by the British Empire and such. There are these movements by empire is to help create the nation but mostly the nation is created out of a rejection of being exploited any longer by the empires.
So empire is the joining of a lot of different groups of people into a centralized government that there, that [00:22:00] everybody’s going to have to feed into, including all of their natural resources go towards that central government that will then provide security for all of, for all of its members within the empire.
Channing: That makes so much sense. Thank you for taking the time to explain that, because now I’m like, okay. I can wrap my mind around it a lot better.
Kate: Thank you. Okay, so then let’s talk about 106 years ago, the empires that we have around Ukraine, you have the Russian empire, you have the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, which is sometimes in the history, the Polish crown, and, you have the Ottoman empire. These are all. Overlapping empires that are fighting for the same territory that want the same resources in order to like feed back to those greater empires.
And Ukraine just happens to line up on all of these. In fact, lots of Eastern Europe, Romania, where [00:23:00] I am also had this struggle where they’re overlapping empires that are constantly creating tension and war and conflicted space. And so you get these movements in the 19th century to create nation states and say, Hey, we’re ethnic Ukrainians. We should have our own nation state. And that way we’re going to be protected from these empires who keep fighting over us and our resources. So we’re ethnic Ukrainians; we’re going to make a nation state. Ethnic Romanians are going to make a nation state. This is like the idealized version of what happens. There are all kinds of people that live in these territories. And that’s where we struggle in the contemporary period to understand what was going on in these earlier periods. Because we think that coherently, these spaces make sense for ethnic Ukrainians. Who lives in Ukraine? Ukrainians [00:24:00] live in Ukraine.
But that’s not what was happening with empire. Lots of people were living in this territory. Lots of people are expelled or brought in at certain moments.
Vladimir Putin right now is making an argument that Ukraine has always been a part of Russia and Ukrainians are Russian. This is just not true. First of all, ethnic Ukrainians see themselves as different from ethnic Russians. That doesn’t mean there aren’t ethnic Russians living in Ukraine. Ukraine has a lot of different people that live there.
It’s we can’t just consider it Ukrainians. We’re seeing right now a real big problem with Africans or even Afro Ukrainians living and Ukraine that aren’t able to get out because of the same racist ideas that only Ukrainians live in Ukraine, the only ethnic Ukrainians live in Ukraine.
So there’s a difference between ethnic Ukrainians and Ukrainian citizenship too. Right. So we have to think of these two things [00:25:00] that come from that creation of nation states as two separate things, people who are part of an ethnic group and people who are part of a citizenship of a state.
So during the beginning of the 20th century, there’s a fight over Ukraine specifically. And the Russian empire ultimately has been taking little pieces from the Polish crown and a little pieces from the Ottoman empire too and now they want to create their own nation state that is separate from the Russian empire. That started before the Bolshevik Revolution.
What Vladimir Putin wants to say is that that the Soviet Union created Ukraine. That just is not true. I think an interesting part of this is to talk about how huge Russia [00:26:00] is. It goes from the Pacific coast, all the way to the Black Sea and Ukraine. It goes from the Arctic circle all the way down through Central Asia. It’s a huge landscape. And it’s important to talk about that. That’s what it looked like in the empire as well.
And the empire was run not even by Russians at some points, right? So Catherine, the Great who many people know about watch movies about, recognize is not even Russian herself. She is German royalty from Prussia who is appointed to be the Russian Empress. And when she starts gaining territory along the Black Sea-, that is now Ukraine- she kicks out the Turks that are living there and the Crimean Tatars, and she brings in Germans and French. So this space is just made up of a lot of different people. So we can’t understand it [00:27:00] as just like a one people nation state.
Let’s talk about what the Bolshevik revolution was really fast and get into what this larger argument is because it’s going to play out again in the 1990s. Vladimir Putin is saying that Vladimir Lenin, who starts the Bolshevik Revolution in the midst of World War I to have a communist revolution in Russia. Well, Putin is saying is that he created after the Bolsheviks gained power, he created Ukraine like out of nowhere, this is, this is inaccurate.
There was already a nationalist movement before that. But what is he talking about? He has like a kernel of truth here. Like something small truth that he’s like really pulling out. You have this Bolshevik revolution in 1917, and then afterwards you have something like five years of civil war that takes place [00:28:00] in Russia, between the Whites and the Reds and ultimately the Reds win out and they decided we’re going to have a communist state: communism understood through a reading of Marx by Lenin. So Lenin understands Marx to say a certain thing. And when he interprets Marx this way, we call that Marxist Leninism. Marxist Leninism says that ultimately we’re going to have a classless and stateless society, but before that, we need to create nations.
And one of those nations, one of those nations that gets created within the Soviet union is Ukraine. And then you have a bunch that are created in central Asia in the caucus region. You just have all these nations that then make up the Soviet Union.
Channing: Which just to be clear, they’re all created, but then eventually in, ideally in this theory are going to be dissolved.
Kate: Yeah. [00:29:00] Eventually, there will be no nation state, and eventually there will be no class, but because –
Channing: That seems relevant to the story.
Kate: This is a good point to talk about teleology. So this is a teleological argument on behalf of Marx, on behalf of Lenin so when I went to take my exams, I took my exam, my PhD qualifying exams on this topic. And what I was saying was there’s a really interesting parallel between teleological ideologies.
So teleological it’s a Greek word means the end teleos means end. So this is an idea that you see the end. So in Marxist Leninism, you see the end, which is a stateless classless society. There were lots of people that I was reading in my Soviet texts were comparing it to Mormonism.
Mormonism also has a teleological argument. It says that we’re [00:30:00] all working towards an end goal. That is millenarianism, traditionally called millenarianism, and the second coming. And so we always see this end goal and history working towards that. So there’s a lot of parallels that happen in Soviet ideology that happened in Mormon ideology as well.
Channing: Can we talk about how fascinating that is? I mean, I don’t have a whole lot to say about that, but like, honestly, I will never cease to be amazed that like, oh, that’s just so fascinating. Like this idea that like, oh, Mormons are so, so peculiar. Right? We’re a peculiar people, but also maybe not.
Kate: I mean, we are peculiar. pretty peculiar in our own ways, but yet there are lots of ways, especially with people that we think we disagree with. Right?
What this episode is going to show, like, there are lots of ways that the goals are really similar because it comes out of these ideological [00:31:00] frameworks.
Channing: Well, and I also think that that’s super fascinating, at least making some social commentary on that, like living in Northern Utah, you know, I come across like a lot of white male conservatives who like very strongly, you know, have very strong opinions on basically everything. But, a lot of what I’ve heard lately is this idea of like, oh, well the Russians, like, they’re just so different from us. Like everything’s so different and they’re the bad guys.
But if we really like took the time to notice all of the similarities between what we value and what we feel is important and what we’re working toward, like there seems to be more commonalities than not. It, again reminds me why careful research and paying attention to To history and the way that things develop are an important part of understanding who we are as a collective people and also examining closely what is it that I really actually value?
What other people, might I be, you [00:32:00] know, metaphorically in bed with as I advocate for these issues. So
Kate: Yeah. That’s, that’s great. Yeah. I love that you use that, that phrase metaphorically in bed with, because I think that’s what we’re getting at is that ultimately these folks are going to understand themselves to be very similar, but we have to, we have to kind of get through a lot of history before they can get there.
But part of the ideological portion of this is that ideology makes governments, makes systems, do certain things like certain actions that are really similar. So even though Soviet ideology and Mormon ideology look very different at times, and very similar at times, they’re doing the same actions and I think that’s really interesting.
So one of the sources that I want to talk about is that USGA at BYU essay, [00:33:00] it’ll be in the show notes, “the History of BYU and LGBTQ issues”. This essay talks about how McCarthyism- we all understand McCarthyism that happened in the United States- and the Lavender Scare that happened in the United States was found on a smaller level at BYU within the honor code.
This essay really points out that the honor code is developed out of this McCarthy era, 1950s, understanding of surveillance. So we should be surveilling gay people because they are more susceptible to communism. That’s what the Lavender Scare ultimately was. Lavender Scare through 10,000 people out of work in the United States for being gay for being LGBTQ, for having associations with LGBTQ people, it led to many [00:34:00] suicides during this period.
It’s a big moment in history and it plays out on a smaller scale on BYU campus. And this is where we get that surveillance that happens within the BYU honor code. But that’s so similar, right, to what we expect to find in Russia. What we think about Russia or the Eastern block is this hyper surveillance, but it’s happening because the ideology is, it is expected to permeate.
https://www.usgabyu.com/single-post/byuhistory
Channing: Right, right. And it functions in similar ways to unexpected maybe because the circumstances the, like the particulars of the circumstances are different, but the way that it functions is the same. And I think that that’s fascinating and relevant. I’m excited to read the essay. I haven’t read it before, but I’m going to add it to my list.
Kate: Okay, good. It’s a great one. Highly recommend. Okay. So let’s talk about what happens after the Soviet Union. So people are dissatisfied and disaffected by the Soviet Union is failing in [00:35:00] 1991. It’s dissolved. And so then there’s this really fierce and immediate kind of try to pull the Soviet Union and its independent states into a global market economy.
And that transition is really, really fast and really harsh on the Russian Federation in particular. But 1991, you get a new president there’s a creation of the office of president the president and the Russian Federation. And it’s supposed to be a liberal democratic nation. And they’re going to appoint a president named Boris Yeltsin.
And there’s this dramatic change between a command economy and a market economy. But this is the world’s largest country. If you can imagine just our country changing overnight, literally like tried to change it within [00:36:00] one year to an entirely new economic system. You’re going to have major growing pains and it’s going to cause a lot of problems.
Can somebody read this quote?
Colette: Sure I will. “The second wave of privatization occurred in 1994 to 1995. However, to the average Russian, the processing to benefit solely the friends of those in power who had received large chunks of Russian industry for little. In particular, Russia’s companies in the natural resource sector were sold at prices well- below those recommended by the IMF to figures who are close to the family, meaning Yeltsin and his daughter and their allies in government from this process emerge the oligarchs individuals who because of their political connections came to control huge segments of the Russian economy. Many of these oligarchs bought factories for almost nothing, strip them, sold what they could and then close them, creating huge job losses by the time Yeltsin left office in 1999, most of the rest, the economy had been privately.”
https://www.britannica.com/place/Russia/Post-Soviet-Russia
Kate: This is really [00:37:00] important because you hear all the time who are the Russian oligarchs. These Russian oligarchs are in the news literally every day now. And you might not know who they are, but this is the process that happened. Yeltsin was giving these market economies to his close buddies and they’re creating this Russian oligarchy.
This quote, by the way, comes from britannica.com, which I don’t usually recommend doing, finding an encyclopedia definition, but I felt like that’s summarized that really well. So Russians begin to see this as a problem with capitalism and liberal democracy, the United States successfully has told the world that liberal democracy and capitalism go hand in hand.
And so they’re thinking Russians are disaffected by this. They don’t want this economy that’s that suddenly makes it so they aren’t supported. They’re not well cared for, and it’s making these people [00:38:00] super rich. So they’re becoming disaffected.
Colette: I just can only imagine like being someone in that situation. Of course, you’d be frustrated if you’re saying, thinking this is supposed to be the best thing ever, and my life is actually worse off now, or geez, not as improved as I thought it would be. So thanks for explaining that.
Kate: Yeah, exactly. That’s exactly what’s happening. So the Russian Federation kept it Soviet constitution, right? So I said, every nation state needs a constitution. The Soviet Union had a constitution. The Russian Federation keeps that it just adds the office of the president. And it doesn’t determine who has the power between the legislative branch and the executive branch.
And so the executive branch, that’s Boris Yeltsin himself, is taking more and more power because the constitution allows for that. And there are clashes between Yeltsin and Congress that created real violence and militia ended up taking over the parliamentary building in 1993.
So, this [00:39:00] led Yeltsin to create a new constitution that took more and more power away from the Congress and consolidated power into the office of the president, which is going to be problematic when you get to Putin.
So he’s consolidating all of this power into the office of the president. There begins to be these nationalists movements within Russia of these different ethnic groups were saying, we need our own nation. We don’t want to be a part of this thing anymore. One of those independence movements that was most important for what we’re going to talk about is Chechnya.
In December, 1994, Chechnya, which if you look at a map is just uber, uber small. It’s just so teeny compared to this massive Russian country. And it’s a small region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. And this is how Putin actually gets to power. Chechnya’s and Muslim majority territory was [00:40:00] strong desire to be independent from Russia and Yeltsin sent Russian forge forces into Chechnya and the Chechens beat the Russians back.
It’s a huge embarrassment for the Russian Federation and for Yeltsin. But more than that, it includes massive, massive human rights violations on both sides of the war. It’s unknown how many people died, but estimates range from 20,000 to a hundred thousand. This is a three year excursion. It’s not very long. The Russian human rights organizations, I think I’m going to privilege those numbers and they say there were 50,000 casualties. These are civilian casualties. These are just a bunch of a bunch of people. There’s a Wikipedia article on the first Chechen war that you can kind of give, get some background for this.
You can easily see some similarities that are happening in Chechnya that are happening in Ukraine today. So between 1994, 1996 [00:41:00] is when this war took place. But things that are happening that were happening there that are happening today, there are use of weapons that are deemed illegal by by members of NATO. There was targeting, killing, raping torturing civilians and using civilians even as human shields. So lots of human rights violations during the first Chechen war in 1985, Yeltsin signed into law the change from the KGB to the FSB and made the well-known guy, Vladimir Putin, the director of the FSB.
This is the same year. Remember that we talked about earlier, Allan Carlson goes to Russia, goes to Moscow and things are in chaos in terms of economy and affiliate, failing military campaign. [00:42:00] So, what are the Russian sociologists experiencing when Allan Carlson arrived? Right? So they’re in the midst of all of this chaos. They’re looking for something different. That’s going to work for them and reliance on the family and conservative ideas, they’re experienced economic crises, a losing war, oligarchs securing as much of Russian free market capital. So they’re looking for something different.
Channing: Yeah, it just sounds like there’s a lot of chaos that’s happening around those situations. And so probably I can imagine that the desperation for change is pretty high at this.
Kate: Yeah. The first Chechen war ends in 1996, but because the Russians have been so embarrassingly defeated, the Chechens began attacking Russian apartment buildings, and tensions began attacking Russian apartment buildings, Russia to came to start a new war against Chechen separatists forces,[00:43:00] remembering that Chechen is still part of Russia.
Yeltsin installed Putin as prime minister in 1999, kind of out of nowhere and Putin then oversaw the second war in Chechnya. The second war saw massive unfathomable, unfathomable human rights violations, and Putin orchestrated those attacks on, Chechen civilians.
Colette: So one of the most famous journalists of revealing the human rights violation in Chechnya was Anna Politkovskaya. Like many of the attacks on journalists within Russia over the past few decades, the threats were made on her life. Yet she continued to report the human rights atrocities from Chechnya. She was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya who held her for a mock execution. She was poisoned on a plane while trying to intervene in the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis and the plane had to turn back. On October 7th, 2006, she was assassinated in her apartment building.
The [00:44:00] Chechen wars are often regarded as catalysts for conservative leadership to come to power. And thus for human rights violations have been taking place since 2017, about against LGBTQ plus people. There are concentration camps established for LGBTQ plus people, and many murders took place.
Chechnya encourages the killing of family members who are queer as honor killings. Sometimes people released from prison because the authorities know that they will be killed by their families. The Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov claims to be best friends with Putin. His Instagram account is one of the most popular accounts on the platform with over 8 million followers. As a prime minister, Putin was made acting president when Yeltsin resigned though, he was unpopular until the second Chechen war began.
But because of the success of the second war within a few months, in 2000, he was elected president since then he has been consolidating his power into an authoritarian regime bent on traditional values and recreating the Russian empire.[00:45:00]
Channing: So much going on.
Kate: Lots of journalists are targets, right? this is like something well-known within Russian authoritarianism right now is, that the free press is not free. That journalists are targeted and there are human rights violations, considerable human rights violations.
Colette: This is this is me being embarrassed. How little I know about world history in general and how America centric my education has been like, this is just like, I knew that things weren’t great in Russia, but goodness gracious just to have this history laid out so clearly and succinctly of how much just horrific things have been going on is very, just heartbreaking. And mind-boggling.
Kate: I have to admit that I was watching a show yesterday where there is a queer couple, two [00:46:00] queer couples, a young queer couple, and an older queer couple United States, couple right. And the older queer couple was trying to explain to the younger queer couple. And just how different their lives are. And the older queer couple said, I’m so grateful that you take for granted all that you take it take for granted, because that means that we’ve come so far, but you have to recognize like what we went through and we aren’t taught queer issues in school. Right. We don’t know about the Lavender Scare. Nobody’s going to hear about that in, in their education, in on McCarthyism. They, aren’t going to hear about these queer histories. And so, you know, we’ve been through that in, in the US and, and it’s happening right now. What we went through is happening right now around the world. Those queer couples are [00:47:00] experiencing what that other, that older us generation queer couple was explaining the terror of being queer abroad.
Colette: Well, and that brings to mind. I remember one time someone asked me, why are there so many more queer people now? And I’m like, there, aren’t more queer people than when you were growing up. It’s just that safer to be out. And now I, to add it’s safer to be out in America. And of course it’s still not entirely safe. I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about that.
But I think this just goes to show like, We don’t condone honor killings in the United States of queer people. Whereas this is still something that is happening in other countries. And so it is safer to be out. So yeah, maybe it seems like there’s more queer people, but queer people exist and have existed everywhere for all of time. I know Kate kind of laughs at “for all of time” phrase, but it’s true.
Channing: We know, at least since, uh, Joseph and the [00:48:00] rainbow coat of many colors. So.
Colette: The rainbow dress.
Channing: Yes.
Kate: I want to come back to this point of honor, killings that you said, because the particular targets of honor killings are usually lesbians. This is in Chechnya lesbians are the targets. And I think we don’t talk about that enough, that lesbian, we think about gay men and gay men were definitely targets and Cheshire specifically gay men trying to be caught in the act, right?
This is the same thing that BYU was doing in 1950 stalking BYU students in Salt Lake City, trying to catch them in an act. But it’s particularly dangerous in Chechnya for lesbians because their family members are responsible for these honor killings that it’s more likely for lesbians to suffer from honor killings.
Channing: Kate, would you say that that would potentially indicate an issue of intersectionalism?
Kate: [00:49:00] Absolutely.
Channing: Yeah. Sorry. I like, I’m trying to find the words, but like where we see in these women, they, their identities as women, but also their identity as lesbians where they intersect and create potentially a greater difficulty or a greater risk that potentially gay men did not experience at the same severity or the same rate. Would you, would you say that?
Kate: Yeah. I think that’s exactly what’s happening. I think you’re, you’re pointing out exactly what’s happening that honor killings have disproportionately affect women already. So for sure.
Channing: Oh, that’s just so unfortunate and incredibly discouraging. I echo exactly what you said, Colette, of like, I, again, so American centric, but that’s really how it is. Like how did I not know about this stuff growing up and going on, but yeah, it’s just heartbreaking. It’s heartbreaking.
Kate: Let’s like come back to the 1990s and talk [00:50:00] about the way that Russians and Americans are working together to create an anti LGBTQ conservative movement. That’s gonna, that’s gonna transcend national politics. It’s gonna make people be on the same side, idealized, ideologically. So Americans and Russians were working together in the 1990s to start the World Congress of Families, as we already saw, it was organized in 1995, which is the same year the Family Proclamation comes out, under a larger organization called Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. If this center sounds familiar it’s because it’s probably because they have very tight connections with Mormons, including the J Reuben Clark law school at BYU and with Dallin H Oaks himself since he was a board member for 25 years.
So I have this quote from the book “Religious Leaders [00:51:00] and Faith-based Politics: 10 Profiles”. One of the profiles is on Dallin H Oaks. So if one of you could read that.
Channing: “Elder Oaks served for 25 years on the board of directors of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society. In 1999, in conjunction with the World Family Policy Center, formerly the NGO Family Voice at BYU and other co-sponsors the Howard Center convened the second World Congress in Geneva, Switzerland.”
Kate: So when we were talking at the beginning, Allan Carlson and Dallin H. Oaks and Boyd K. Packer, all joining to celebrate, this is that moment. This is that conference that they’re celebrating the World Congress of Families began organizing conferences primarily in Eastern Europe, started in with the 1997 conference.
That was the first one in Prague and through the organization efforts of BYU and the [00:52:00] funding from Russian conservative, oligarchs that Yeltsin, you know, appointed and the Russian Orthodox church, they all combined efforts to create the World Congress of Families and fight LGBTQ rights in these places in Europe.
At this point, the World Congress of Families has already decided to learn from their mistakes in the U S and that is Hawaii, which we talk about in that other episode, with The Faithful Feminists, they’re going to start fighting same sex marriage before it even becomes an issue in these places internationally.
So internationally the World Congress of Families through BYU J. Reuben Clark law school, led by former Utah Supreme Court justice, Dallin, H. Oaks and Russian oligarch funding start vying for legislation in Eastern Europe to fight same sex marriage. We might not have noticed this in the US because the Mormon [00:53:00] church was fighting on the home front too, right, with Proposition 8 in California. And all these efforts were preemptive, right? It’s legislation put in place that says marriage is between a man and a woman before we can ever even conceptualize something that same sex marriage.
Channing: Like, why, why are queer people at the target? Like, why is this such, why is, why is this the issue that they chose to go after and spend so much money so much time, create, like, pull on so much influence to create a problem for? I think it’s just this. I think I feel a couple of things discouraged, frustrated and confused.
I think the threat, at least as a queer person, myself, like is largely a perceived threat. That’s not even really accurate. That’s not accurate at all. But to just understand just how all of these moving pieces are working in concert with [00:54:00] each other to fight against something that doesn’t even pose a threat is just. appalling to me. I just don’t under, I don’t, I genuinely don’t understand why.
Colette: Well, I’m not a historian or political scientist or anything, but the little bit I have known and researched and heard. But again, America centric, but in America, the conservative movement needed a, something to rally around and to have these coalitions with churches and they found common ground in women’s rights or non rights and with queer issues.
And those became the, like just the place that they could all come together and agree on and get these voting blocks going, because this was [00:55:00] something they could rally around. And I’m sure that people smarter than me could talk a lot more in depth about it and understanding, but that’s, that’s what’s happening here is if you can get church buy-in, along with political buy-in, these are the voting blocks that have been shown to get people moving and organizing is these particular issues.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And we have to remember the Cold War context. So after World War II, women were in the workforce. Right? We talked about this on the other episode, women are in the workforce and somehow you have to have a movement to say, how are we going to get women out of the workforce?
What are we going to have men do? And there’s a huge threat to masculinity. After World War II, how do you show your masculinity, if we’re not going to go to war? The Cold War is all about not going to war. So how do you show your masculinity? So we have to [00:56:00] recreate our whole concept of masculinity and it is in fighting against feminist movements.
And it’s also fighting against queer people who are thought of as not masculine and weak and susceptible to communism in the United States. But in the Soviet Union, you have these similar concepts, but they’re also suppressed under the communist state that then they get to explore that once the Soviet state is gone, let’s think about how we can reframe these conservative movements.
So those things ultimately lead to these like serendipitous relationship between American conservatives and Russian conservatives.
Channing: Yeah. So that quote that the, the downfall of the Mormon churches, feminists homosexuals and intellectuals is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Kate: yeah.
Channing: Great. I love being a part of that. That’s who all my friends [00:57:00] are.
Kate: That’s funny. Okay, so, let’s kind of jump ahead a little bit to what happens in 2005. 2005, Carlson is going to work with a different Mormon called Paul Mero. He’s the president of a Utah based think tank called the Sutherland Institute and they write a manifesto together and it’s called The Natural Family: A Manifesto.
And we talk about this happens after The Family Proclamation, that lots of churches and groups start creating their own sorts of proclamations. This one is with a Mormon and Carlson. Ultimately in 2007, they turned this into a book. You can still find it on Amazon. I’m not going to post that link onto our show notes. Yeah. But then, you know, all of that is happening in simultaneous with Proposition 8. [00:58:00] So all of these things kind of are hidden from us as Mormons, but we all participate in it as Mormons. We know Proposition 8. does such a good job talking about Prop 8 and, and what that was like.
Colette: Yeah. And it’s very interesting. Just looking back on Prop 8, not realizing I was queer at the time. But I am from California. And so obviously this was going on. I was aware of it. I was at BYU, but they invited and invited is, you know, an interesting word in the church sometimes. Like, is this a, you know, how much are you kind of, yeah.
All California residents to come to this meeting. I wish I could remember more about it. I think it was some sort of broadcast from Salt Lake to all these California residents, well, to all California. And then they organized this gathering for BYU students who are California residents to watch, and it was [00:59:00] encouraging them to do what they can to help make sure that marriage stayed between a man and a woman.
And so they organize phone banks and we were asked to volunteer again, asked to volunteer our time to call California residents and encourage them to vote the party line. I felt so, so uncomfortable with doing that. You know, even not aware of my own queerness, but having friends who are queer as well as I thought the church wasn’t supposed to be involved in politics, but here they are telling all church members to do these phone banks. So that was my experience of it. And I I’m really grateful that I wasn’t aware I was queer at the time because I can only imagine how much harder that would have been for me.
Kate: Yeah, absolutely. I living in California, I know folks who were queer and, and participating in that and [01:00:00] realizing later, like I did this, you know, and it internalized homophobia, so heartbreaking. But let’s think about this in terms of like, usually we, we look at this as like a unilateral thing. Like the US is exporting LGBTQ hate abroad, but when we’re looking at the World Congress of Families, we realize that it’s funded by Russian oligarchs and American churches together.
Russia is actually influencing things like Prop 8, too. Right? They’re funding sorts these sorts of projects as well. Not only are we going to fund to help Russia create their own Prop 8, but Russia is helping us create our Prop 8. So there is that link. It’s not unilateral, we’re doing this together. The conservative movements are joined forces at this point, right? So we [01:01:00] talk about Russia influencing the political atmosphere in favor of Donald Trump and all of that stuff. But we have to look at this as happening much earlier. In 2008, there’s Russian and conservative involvement together, as soon as there’s the collapse of the Soviet Union. So then, right, so you have the 2008 prop eight, which happens in the US. The you know, the funding and the organization, all of these ideas move to Russia, right? So then we need to create a Russian anti LGBTQ law. And that happens in 2013, the World Congress of Families organizes the same sort of law in Russia, and we call it in the U S the gay propaganda law.
I’m just gonna have somebody read from the gay propaganda law Wikipedia page to just kind of frame what this is like. So why don’t you want to read [01:02:00] that?
Colette: I’ll read it. The Russian government stated purpose for the law is to protect children from being exposed to homosexuality content, presenting homosexuality as being a Norman society under the argument that contradicts traditional family values. Businesses and organizations can also be forced to temporarily cease operations, if convicted under the law, and foreigners may be arrested and detained for up to 15 days, then deported or fined up to 5,000 rubles and deported.
Kate: Yes. So this is it’s supposed to be protecting the children. The law name in Russian is centered on protecting children, which is, this is what the World Congress of Families does: it’s taking anti LGBTQ language and manipulating it to be something that people can rally behind. Oh, I can totally rally behind pro family movements. Oh, I can totally rally behind [01:03:00] protecting children from homosexuality. Like these, the way that it’s manipulated in this way is just really sinister.
Colette: We’ll get, because you saying protecting children, I’m like, um, what about the queer children? Who’s protecting them? Like, that’s the first thing that came to mind when you were saying, protecting the children. Like you’re not protecting all children. You’re actively harming children.
Kate: Yeah. Yeah. Which we see today in the United States as well, right? Like these movements, these movements are not dissociated from one another. The fact that Russia invades Ukraine at the same time that we have Governor Abbott saying that we need to criminalize parents for child abuse against their transgender children.
That, that literally happened the same week. Those things are not disconnected from one another. These things are completely intertwined.[01:04:00] So part of Putin’s argument for the law was that he was concerned about low Russian birth rates, something, he calls something along the lines of Russian cultural and ethnic suicide that we’re not going to be able to perpetuate our own Russianness, if we support LGBTQ people. The same argument is made by Dallin H Oaks in Hawaii. He says, we’re not going to be able to perpetuate our American really American white culture if we allow for LGBTQ people, because we’ll just wipe out the the American people because LGBTQ people can’t procreate.
So these same arguments are happening in the 1990s. And then through the 2000s, this idea of cultural suicide.
Colette: I’d have to say the arguments that [01:05:00] people do. I know I’ve heard them before, but they just sound more and more absurd to me. I’m like that you’re stretching that far to try to make this argument, the case that same-sex marriage shouldn’t be a thing. Like, do you realize how absurd you sound? Like I, anyways, that’s kind of where my brain is with some of these things,
Kate: Absolutely. But it’s the idea that, that multiple fronts are taking up this ridiculous argument, right? It’s like, oh Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna use that to harm people where I am too, right? Like
Colette: It’s sort of working there. So I’m just going to take it and run with it here.
Kate: Yeah. So Putin also said. This is in response to the 2013 gay propaganda. He’s he’s trying to promote the gay propaganda law. “I can hardly imagine same-sex marriages being allowed in Chechnya. Can you imagine it? It would have resulted in human casualties.” which is just ridiculous [01:06:00] considering how many human casualties he caused in Chechnya. Right? This is just a manipulation of the truth in order to create scare tactics around LGBTQ people. And he’s specifically calling on Chechnya where there’s going to be such a vitriol and hatred towards the LGBTQ community.
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323495604578539220032220406)
Channing: Right.
Kate: So, in the article from Freedom House called “Dismantling LGBTQ+ Rights as a Means of Control in Russia”, the subheading is ” from anti LGBT plus legislation to Chechnya and atrocities. The crumbling uses state sponsored homophobia as part of its strategy to maintain power and influence at the expense of its own citizens fundamental rights,” which is exactly what Colette was saying. Right, Like
https://freedomhouse.org/article/dismantling-lgbt-rights-means-control-russia
Colette: Uh,
Kate: these, right.
Can one of you read this?[01:07:00]
Colette: I will, “Regulating gender and sexuality remains at the forefront of Russia’s domestic and international political agendas. The 2013 gay propaganda law marked a significant shift and using legislation to foster a sense of national identity at the expense of LGBT plus peoples fundamental rights, the Russian government’s traditional values seek to maintain a sense of moral sovereignty in the space of Western influence or so they claim. In reality, publicize homophobia, and the objectification of tradition, not only aims to draw symbolic boundaries between Russian culture and the west, but also constructs an enemy LGBT plus people through the infringement of the enemies rights, they help to bolster national identity and religious sentiment.”
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/what-is-threatening-traditional-family-values-in-russia-today/
Kate: And so this, this is written from the Russian perspective, but you could easily see this happening in the United States as well. These movements are simultaneous.
Channing: Right.
Kate: Yeah. So there are lots of articles about this lots of articles about the World Congress of [01:08:00] Families. You can find any number about the gay propaganda law And how Putin is using it to bolster up quote unquote traditional family values. And so when he uses that “traditional family values”, he gets the support of American conservatives.
So these folks are just like, they’re all working together to create this idea of Russia that then mobilizes it to do something like invade Ukraine.
Colette: And I just still, anytime people use the traditional family argument, I mean, it goes back to that 1950s thing. Like what people have in mind as the traditional family was invented in the 1950s, like, keep that in mind. And it really, really bothers me because traditional family was, it takes a village and multifamily unit [01:09:00] and people, you know, living with great-grandparents down to infants together. Like I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about that, but I won’t take us too far off topic.
Kate: Yeah, no, I think that that’s something for us to explore maybe in another episode too. I think we will with the Taylor Petrey episode, as well, as talking about this very specific moment after World War II. So that was 2013. In 2014, Russia annexes Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine and also some separatists regions of Ukraine.
So Ukraine has it’s this moment in 2014, when everything we’re seeing today was happening, it was like a, it was like a trial run for Putin in 2014. So let’s talk a little bit about what happened in Crimea. In 2014, Putin goes into Crimea [01:10:00] and at the same time across all of Eastern Europe, there are these World Congress of Families funded legislation. The is saying that we need to start changing the law to say that marriage is between a man and a woman. During an, after the annexation of Crimea, LGBT people were tortured. So once Crimea is annex who are the people who are targeted LGBTQ folks and in Crimea. So people were fleeing before, but after, especially ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea, they are just fleeing, trying to get out of Crimea to what they see as safer, larger Ukraine. These folks relocate to other parts of Ukraine.
https://khpg.org/en/1536007330
https://time.com/3482205/crimea-gay-community-flees-russian-homophobia/https://time.com/3482205/crimea-gay-community-flees-russian-homophobia/
Channing: Right.
Kate: That same year in 2014, Moscow was supposed to host the World Congress of Families conference the U S threatened to [01:11:00] sanction any us organizations and individuals if they participated in these Russian conferences because of Crimea. So the conference is technically canceled, but it was actually held with the same lineup under a different name.
Colette: I guess that’s one way around it.
Channing: Disappointed, but not surprised,
Colette: I think that’ll just be my ongoing mood.
Channing: Correct.
Colette: That phrase.
Kate: So in 2015 surprise, surprise, the conferences is held for the first time in the United States. And where do you think it’s held in the United States? The only
Channing: if you say Salt Lake, if you say Salt Lake, I know you’re going to say Salt Lake because I see on the online, but oh my gosh.
Kate: Yeah. So, so we go straight from trying to sanction the World Congress of Families for participation in the 2014 Moscow conference to a 2015 conference in Salt Lake City. [01:12:00] And right before that 2015 conference, the Human Rights Campaign issued this huge expose you can still read the huge report that they wrote up on the World Congress of Families, saying that they’re hate group and talking specifically about their links to Russia and to the annexation of Crimea in Ukraine. And it’s worthwhile to read this long quote where they point out they specifically call out certain people. So if somebody can read this from that 2015 report.
Channing: Okay. “The World Congress of Families is an organization with strong ties to American Christian and conservative groups and religious groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Knights of Columbus. The World Congress of Families stated mission is to spread American pro-family views, specifically opposition to LGBT and women’s rights to other [01:13:00] countries. It’s staff members and representatives have established close links with Russian President Vladimir Putin and anti LGBT extremists in Africa. The World Congress of Families has been most active in Russia where the group is supported by billionaire oligarchs and extremist members of the Russian Orthodox church.
It works closely with members of the Russian Duma and the Putin regime, and has encouraged the passage of anti LGBT laws in Russia. Most notably the 2013 ban on gay propaganda. World Congress of Families backers include Russian officials who were sanctioned by the United States government following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. World Congress of Families staff members continue to praise Putin’s action in Ukraine. World Congress of Families’ close relationship with a Russian ruling elite was to be celebrated with an elaborate international conference at the Kremlin in September, 2014. After the instability and Ukraine forced the cancellation of this event, [01:14:00] World Congress of Families representatives, nevertheless attended an almost identical conference, Large Families: The Future of Humanity that went ahead despite the political upheaval. World Congress of Families also announced plans to hold a conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in October, 2015. The first time a major World Congress of Families event would be held in the United States.”
Kate: This is a pretty damning paragraph for the church. There’s been lots written about the connection between the World Congress of Families and American conservatives and Russian oligarchs pointing out all of these things, but there’s not been anything written about the role that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints plays. And it’s very clear given this report. And the influence of BYU, the J. Reuben Clark law center, Dallin H Oaks himself that, and Paul [01:15:00] Mero that these, that Mormons are heavily heavily involved with the Russian oligarchs here.
Colette: Well, and then to have the conference in Salt Lake, and you can go and find a bunch of news articles about it happening that Elder Ballard spoke at it big event for the church. And you know, if you want to go look up stuff from Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News like they’re not hiding it.
Kate: Yeah, well, actually they are hiding it. Slowly but surely, I’ve been finding articles that I’ve compiled for this, for this paper that I’m writing and slowly but surely they’re being pulled out of newspaper archives. They’re being taken off the internet slowly. This is slowly, there’s an erasure of Mormon participation in this
Channing: Well, that’s pretty on par [01:16:00] with what we find in other places. So again, it just seems to be the theme of this episode, disappointed, but not surprised.
Kate: Yeah. So the reason that I got interested in this, I was in Romania in 2018, when Romania had their own law that came under attack. So the World Congress of Families started supporting, funding, a legislative movement to change the Romanian constitution to say that marriage should be between a man and a woman.
The Romanian Constitution currently says that marriage is between spouses. This was again like a preemptive movement. There is no one saying that Romania should have same-sex marriage, but we’re going to go in and try to make this like a stronger foundation in Romania. And so. There’s this referendum in 2018.
And I remember this, I was [01:17:00] here and I was like, this sounds super familiar. I know of this rhetoric, right? This is 2008 all over again. This is Prop 8. So this is really where I started to unravel these the links between the church and these movements, but to see it happen and have it directly impact my life in Eastern Europe is just like, really, again, sinister. That’s how I that’s how I would put it.
Channing: Yeah, that’s a good word for it.
Colette: Very good words.
Kate: And then we have Ukraine today, right? Like 2014 was just the beginning was just the beginning and it was to see how far Putin could go and who was going to support him and were American conservatives gonna support him? So what we’re seeing right now with the invasion of Ukraine, it’s completely unsurprising than American conservatives right off [01:18:00] the bat were like, yes, we’re going to side with Putin here. And there has been considerable considerable pushback in the past week, but even Tucker Carlson right out of the gate was like, Yeah. I’m on the side of Putin. Tucker Carlson was shown on Moscow supported Kremlin supported Russian TV saying I support Putin. So this conservative movement it might be surprising to some people to say, why are you backing Putin? But to me it’s completely unsurprising, right? Like this has been going on for three decades. Yeah. And this is happening throughout the world. This is not just Eastern Europe. It’s not just Russia. It’s not just the United States. The World Congress of Families has fingers in legislation throughout the world, especially in Africa. Especially in West Africa: Ghana, Nigeria, and [01:19:00] other now Mormon- funded movements are also happening in those places. So you get somebody like Sharon Slater who is Mormon, and she finds her own organization funded by Mormons to go and support something called Kill the Gays law in Ghana. Right. It’s called Kill the Gays law.
https://www.newsweek.com/carlson-makes-russian-state-tv-again-guest-comments-against-ukraine-1684345
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/family-watch-international
Colette: I don’t understand how someone like to be that blatant. Like isn’t one of the 10 commandments not to kill? Like, do we still believe in that part? Like, I don’t, disappointed, but not surprised isn’t quite the right mood for this. Like, this is, I, I don’t
Kate: yeah.
Colette: Like when you posted this on your Instagram this week, Kate, I was just, I didn’t have words. I was just, [01:20:00] it’s just so heavy, so heartbreaking.
Kate: Yeah. So I’m working as a executive board member of Affirmation which is the LGBTQ LDS intersection organization works internationally. We talk with folks across the world who are afraid for their lives, right? How am I as an American with all of my American privilege, supposed to understand what they’re going through And. understand that their own church is propagating these laws.
Colette: Well, what, what would you say to people though that are saying, oh, but that’s not the church, that’s just one person, Sharon Slater. Who’s helping this stuff happen in Africa. It’s not the church. And I know we’ve been talking about the whole episode, but like, can you provide a more succinct argument for me?.
Kate: Well, all of [01:21:00] these systems, it doesn’t matter if it’s a government. It doesn’t matter if it’s a church, any institution or system has multiple components that are contradictory to one another, right? There is no the church there’s no, the Russian state there’s always going to be people. And when you said that, uh, you know, it’s hurting Russian queer people Russian queer children, right?
It’s not all children it’s, there are Russian queer children too. Like there there’s no one thing and there’s always going to be contradictions within these. I personally have been trying to find funding that’s been used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for these efforts, like World Congress of Families.
But I don’t have the access to those things. So if somebody does have access to that information, I would love to hear it. I reached out to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which classifies the [01:22:00] World Congress of Families as a hate group. And I said, can you trace funding from the church to the World Congress of Families?
And they said, no, it’s, kind of, black money, dark money that you can’t really trace because it’s not tax deductible and none of this can be traced or followed. So in terms of funding, does the church fund this? I am not sure, but the church is promoting folks on the far- right. We know this, we know does not exist.
We know that the church has not come out and said anything against the far- right groups while it’s condemning other groups. There are these links that we can’t directly link to money, but we can definitely link to organizational leadership and organizational leadership within the church and organizational leadership within these larger bodies of work.
I don’t think [01:23:00] it’s a coincidence that Dallin H. Oaks as a former Supreme Court Justice of Utah is working on legislation and laws in Hawaii and in Russia, right? Like this is a person who knows law. So, there are other ways that the church is able to support these efforts other than just funding.
That’s what I would say. Does that answer your question?
Colette: That’s really helpful. Yeah. Thank you. But you know, what do we do with all this information? Like I, so, so, so appreciate all the energy time resources you’ve put in to compiling all this and now hopefully disseminating this information, but what do we do? Cause it is discouraging seeing the stuff happening in Russia, now knowing even more the backstory, and of course seeing all the stuff that’s happening [01:24:00] in 33 states fighting anti-trans bills that are happening here at home. Like what do we do?
Kate: Yeah, these are organized efforts, right? They’ve been organized for 30 plus years in some cases, 70 years or more, you know, like these are, these are concentrated, organized efforts and we have to support international LGBTQ efforts. So throw our money into Insight, which is that Ukrainian LGBTQ biggest largest LGBTQ support network for LGBTQ refugees.
Putting money in. But organize! We have to organize as well as these folks have organized since 1995, right? We have to start fighting these, this legislation, not just at home and prop eight and be comfortable with having same-sex marriage here. We have to [01:25:00] organize in the same ways that, that these folks have organized.
That would be my answer. Does anybody else have any answers?
Channing: Yeah. I mean, I think one thread that I’m noticing throughout this conversation is that there is no such thing as an isolated incident and there are no such things as isolated movements. And I, you know, at least from my spiritual perspective, everything, and everyone is interconnected. And so I think Kate you’ve done an excellent job shining a light on where these threads are lead leading to and where they’re tied to and how they’re being interwoven in ways that maybe we can, that are like obvious and noticeable, but also ways that unless we’re paying special particular attention, we may miss. But I think even though we can be discouraged and frustrated and confused to all of [01:26:00] the ways that we see people working together and combining efforts to create a woven net that is meant to keep people out, I think in the same way, we can rely on this thread of interconnection with all other people and recognize that when we work to take care of people, we can undo those threads and use them to create a net or to create a place where people can be held in together. And so maybe potentially removing, I think that that’s a big theme that we’ve seen in this episode is noticing, how are we the same? How are we different? How can we pull on our similarities and create a world that is safe for all people? Not just for me, not just for people living in the United States, but people across the globe. And so, yeah, I don’t know. I feel like it’s hopeful to understand the inner connection can be again, I always come back to, this can be medicine or it can [01:27:00] be poison, but it’s really up to us how we decide to use and administer that.
And I think that there’s a lot of hope to be found in pulling on our interconnected threads and saying, let’s work together. Let’s build something new. Yeah. This is happening. But if like, We can do it. We can do it together. So yeah, the interconnection seems to be a really potent power that can be used for good and for bad.
And I think that we’ve seen that demonstrated really well today.
Kate: Wow. You summarize that episode so well and left us on such a good note. Thank you.
Channing: You’re welcome. It’s like, I’ve been doing it for a while.
Colette: We’re so lucky to have connected with you. And you just saying all that my Mormon side wants to just say amen. That’s my reaction. Thanks,
Channing: I’ve I’ve been praised to the goddess, so.
Colette: Love it.
Thanks for listening. We appreciate you [01:28:00] joining us today. If you’re liking these episodes, we’d love it. If you would rate and review Called to Queer on the podcast player of your choice so that other people are more likely to find us. We’d also love it. If you’d share a podcast with a friend who could benefit from hearing our stories and discussions, if you want to contact us, you can reach us at hello@calledtoqueer.com. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram @CalledToQueer. See you next time.
Bibiography of Secondary Sources
Essig, Laurie, Alexander Kondakov, and Richard C.M. Mode. “A Cold War for the Twenty-First Century: Homosexualism vs. Heterosexualism.” In Soviet and Post-Soviet Sexualities, 79–102. Routledge Contemporary Russia and Eastern Europe Series. London; New York: Routledge, 2019.
Formicola, Jo Renee, and Hubert Morken, eds. Religious Leaders and Faith-Based Politics: Ten Profiles. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.
Stoeckl, Kristina. “The Rise of the Russian Christian Right: The Case of the World Congress of Families.” Religion, State and Society 48, no. 4 (2020): 223–38.