AT first glance, it seemed like a breakthrough for homosexual equality in Russia. After years of battling the authorities, here was Nikolai Alekseyev, Russia’s most visible gay-rights campaigner, on a popular prime-time debate show called “Duel” recently talking about plans to hold a gay pride rally in Moscow.
But the discussion quickly deteriorated, with hostile and bigoted remarks coming not just from Mr. Alekseyev’s opponents but also from the host, who at one point equated homosexuality with pedophilia. When a woman in a Kentucky Derby-style hat started into a screed about “homosexual extremism,” he had had enough.
Calling the woman a lying “hag in a hat,” Mr. Alekseyev charged offstage, stamping a hole through the set as he left.
Any conversation about gay rights in Russia today is bound to be tense. But with Mr. Alekseyev, it can be explosive.
For six years, he has flouted a government ban and held an annual gay-rights event that he calls Moscow Pride. He has weathered arrests and attacks by neo-Nazi thugs, and once got into a shoving match with the press secretary of Yuri M. Luzhkov, the former Moscow mayor who has referred to Mr. Alekseyev’s protests as “satanic.”
With short blond hair and a round, youthful face, Mr. Alekseyev, 33, has the air of a maligned schoolboy out for retribution. He decided to become an activist after Moscow State University, where he was enrolled, refused to accept his graduate thesis, “Legal Regulation of the Status of Sexual Minorities.”
He is brash and provocative, even among would-be supporters. He has berated journalists for coverage he disagrees with.
“He is a complicated person and does not have a mild personality,” said Anna Komarova, a transgender activist allied with Mr. Alekseyev. “But laid-back people choose other occupations.”
BEING a gay-rights activist in Russia is not for the timid. At this year’s Moscow Pride, held outside the Kremlin last month, the two dozen or so participants stood little chance against the phalanx of police officers deployed to stop them. Most were arrested seconds after unfurling a rainbow flag or a placard denouncing homophobia. Gangs of muscular men wearing surgical masks and yelling antigay slurs chased away the rest.
Participants suffered only minor cuts and bruises, and all were released the same day. Mr. Alekseyev, who spent this year’s protest coordinating from an apartment — his father was recently found to have cancer, he said, and he could not risk being jailed as a repeat offender — said previous years were bloodier.
Few others in Russia have risked being as publicly outspoken — or just as out — as Mr. Alekseyev. He calls news conferences at fancy Moscow hotels, gives interviews to newspapers and has appeared on television with increasing regularity. He has, for better or for worse, become the face of a budding campaign for gay rights in Russia.
His efforts have attracted news media attention and forced politicians to discuss the issue. But it is a steep uphill battle; asked to weigh in, Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, said homosexuals deepen Russia’s demographic crisis. And Russia joined many African and Muslim-majority countries on Friday in voting against a United Nations resolution condemning discrimination against homosexuals that, nevertheless, passed.
Mr. Alekseyev, who founded the group Gay Russia in 2005, believes that there can be no advance in rights until gay people are allowed to protest publicly.
But in a country where the authorities view any sort of public protest with trepidation, his position has provoked hostility.
“This is a very dangerous thing,” said Aleksandr Khinshtein, a member of Parliament, and Mr. Alekseyev’s principal opponent on the recent debate show. “Homosexuality can never be allowed to be considered normal. It’s a question of survival.”
Even other gay-rights campaigners have criticized Moscow Pride, saying the rallies and the violence that typically accompanies them distort perceptions of the issue in Russia, where there is still significant confusion about what homosexuality is and what exactly gay people want.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 18, 2011
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the citizenship of Nikolai Alekseyev as a result of his marriage to his Swiss partner. He is not a Swiss citizen.
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