The participation of openly gay, lesbian and transgender athletes in the Tokyo Olympics has led to an upsurge in anti-LGBT commentary on Russian state TV.
Extremely offensive language, some of which appears in this article, was used by the hosts and guests on talk shows aired by the country’s two most popular television channels.
Even though the Kremlin has tended to not publicly support anti-LGBT sentiment, it fits in with the state ideology of defending Russia’s “traditional values” against the West.
The state-run channels dedicated several of their talk shows to speak disparagingly about LGBT athletes at the Games, using words like “abomination” and “perversion”.
