Russia has had a bad millennium, that's all. Reading that region's history is like walking through an overgrown, unmaintained cemetery--depressing, sad, horrible. Their greatest composer in all of history, Tchaikovsky, abandoned Russia for better lands, but when he returned, they murdered him for being gay. Their rulers include Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Nicholas II, the last, murdered czar. None were good for gays. None were nice, smart or even half-way competent. Madness. Bloodlust. The last czar deserved to be executed for his many crimes, but the Russian Orthodox Church sainted him and dubbed him martyr of Christ, merely because they disliked his atheist successors. Imagine being ruled autocratically for a thousand years by an endless succession of bloody-minded fools incapable of reasoning their way out of a paper bag. Now the poor sods have Putin, who hates the gays, hates the West, hates democracy, and thinks nothing matters, not God, not good, not rule of law, nor philosophy. All that matters in Putin's world is pride, ego, this small span of years we call life. He wants to be the king of his little hill until he dies and is terrified lest anyone wrest some small particle of his power away from him. I hate Putin and think he is evil. I hope that he does not commit a great evil in our time.