And yet, under the seriousness of fomenting hatred and inscribing discrimination into the legal code, there has also been a streak of irony and humor in the response to this development. It’s especially fitting in a country where public displays of machismo can often bleed into the homoerotic. How, for example, will this law affect the annual celebration of Paratrooper Day, when, all over the country, thousands of former paratroopers get drunk, strip to their skivvies, and frolic in city fountains, splashing and wetly embracing? Is that homosexual propaganda? And, as a Russian friend pointed out to me, what about the ruling tandem? When Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin go bike riding together, when they have intimate public breakfasts, when they are forced to deny that they’re married, when they play badminton, when they ski and drink cocoa and fish, often in matching outfits and in the total absence of women, what about that?