Are Russia's Gay-Haters in the Closet?

The official homophobia of President Vladimir Putin's third term in power is threatening to backfire on the Russian Orthodox Church, in whose name the anti-gay campaign began in 2012.

Andrei Kuraev, a widely-known Orthodox theologian and proselytizer, is using social networks to expose a "gay system" within the church, fanning a scandal not unlike the one that occurred in the Roman Catholic church shortly before Pope Benedict XVI's surprise abdication last year.

Deacon Kuraev, 50, a fiery missionary and a protege of the previous Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Alexis II, is a controversial figure. Known for anti-Semitic statementsdenouncing the country's oligarchs as a Jewish clique, he penned an apologetic article, explaining, "I don't consider the Jewish people in any way worse than Russians or any other people. I just don't consider Jews better than all the others. Even that, however, seems to be seen as anti-Semitic these days."