A day after Russians approved an effectual ban on gay marriage as part of sweeping amendments to the constitution, Vladimir Putin signaled to supporters it was open season on the rainbow.
The Russian president met with the authors of the amendments Friday and one of them, a former senator, appealed to him to take one step further and limit the use of rainbows in advertising.
"We should ensure those values we tried to put into the constitution are being observed," Yekaterina Lakhova said to Putin in a televised videoconference. "You should give an instruction to Roskomnadzor," the government communications regulator, she said.
Over the last decade or so, Putin has increasingly embraced conservative social issues in an appeal to his traditionalist electorate at home and sympathizers abroad. In 2013, he signed a law banning "gay propaganda" aimed at minors that was widely criticized as a blow to LGBT rights.
In addition to allowing Putin to rule potentially to 2036, the constitutional amendments approved this week covered a range of other topics, from a ban on giving up Russian territory to provisions shoring up traditional values like the one defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
Putin didn't commit to a rainbow crackdown Friday, but told his allies to be on the lookout for for the colorful symbol of homosexual rights.
"If there's reason to think that this is propaganda of values that aren't traditional for us, then the civic organizations that share the official position of the Russian authorities, including those set out in the constitution and our laws, then there has to be civic control, but not aggressively," Putin said.
The rainbow issue came up when another senator from the working group complained that the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had displayed an LGBT flag on one of its downtown buildings June 25 as part of gay pride month. The move set off protests by Russian activists, who trampled on rainbow flags on the sidewalk in front of the building.
Putin brushed off the U.S. display with a homophobic crack, saying, "they showed something about the people who work there."
But Lakhova said the colorful symbol was in fact part of a much more insidious phenomenon that cries out for Kremlin control.
"Billboards today use pretty rainbow colors and it doesn't seem noticeable, with nice words. Or they advertise ice cream that's also called rainbow and so forth," she told Putin. "This is forcing children to get used to this flag, to the colors that were displayed on the embassy."
Chistaya Liniya, a Russian brand that sells rainbow-colored ice cream, said there's no connection between its popular product and the LGBT flag.
"The rainbow is the sun after the rain, it's a good mood," Armen Veniaminov, a company vice president, told Govorit Moskva radio.
