In the progressive narrative, homosexuals are being depicted as Russia’s New Jews, the demonized cultural “other” scapegoated for the ancient frosty nation’s myriad modern dysfunctions. The staged outrage has included the predictable kiss-ins and vodka-dumping parties and counterfactual petitions on change.org and a polemical, Godwin’s Law-addled screed in The New York Times from the Vaseline-smeared lips of homo gasbag Harvey Fierstein.

With Russia hosting 2014’s Winter Olympics, many say they’re hoping for a gay Jesse Owens to steal the show and publicly shame Putin. And the protesters have apparently thrust and pushed and aggressively poked at Russia’s financial prostate gland to the point where officials have now promised that the new “anti-gay propaganda law” will not be wielded against foreigners attending the Olympics.

But that’s merely one skirmish in a war that is only beginning. The broader issue involves a civilizational clash regarding who gets to define morality, what’s normal and what’s deviant, and the very idea of Russian nationhood.

A recent poll shows that 76% of Russians support Putin’s anti-gay-propaganda law. Another poll says that only 17% of Russians consider homosexuality to be “natural,” while three-quarters of respondents say it’s either a mental illness or a bad habit. Many in Russia’s dark and cold hinterlands seem to feel that the whole gay agenda”€”lock, stock, and cock ring”€”is a rude intrusion by Western imperialists.

Beneath the cultural façade are more fundamental power struggles such as the stalemate over extraditing NSA leaker Edward Snowden and competing US/Russian interests in Syria and the rest of the Middle East.

Vladimir Putin, who has consistently bemoaned declining Russian birth rates, has said that Europe and Russia are “facing a demographic crisis.” He also says that mass immigration would be an inefficient and possibly dangerous threat to Russian cohesion and identity. And to solve this crisis, he favors heterosexual procreation over gay-pride parades.

“€œAnalyzing all the circumstances, and the particularity of territorial Russia and her survival,”€ Russian lawmaker Yelena Mizulina says, “€œI came to the conclusion that if today we want to resolve the demographic crisis, we need to, excuse me, tighten the belt on certain moral values and information, so that giving birth and raising children become fully valued.”€

This vague, elastic, and eternally slippery notion of “€œhuman rights”€ is often a zero-sum game. On one side of this current conflict are those who value their genetic heritage and national identity; on the other are those who see “€œgay rights”€ as a spearhead to establish an international borderless multicultural playground. Both sides are convinced that theirs is the only sane and moral choice. With the battle lines so clearly drawn, there can be no compromise; there will be a winner and a loser.