My name is Dmitry Kupaev, I am from Russia, and I am a
gay. When I was seven, my family moved from the Nizhny Novgorod Region to the city of Budyonnovsk, the Stavropol Territory. This is in Russia, in the North Caucasus. There my father got an apartment as a former military man. It was around that time that I began to realize that I was gay. I remember watching the Morning Star program with music videos or concerts, and I understood: I like young guys and men I saw on the screen. I took it for granted and did not even think that any problems could arise in the future because of this.
How to call what I felt I did not understand. My parents said that there were some "blue". But I did not know exactly what it meant, what it was related to. Mom spoke about them badly. But only if the man on the screen was mannered, grimaced. "There are far too many gays," she said. "Whole America, the West ..."
Once we watched a talk show about two men who said that they loved each other and wanted to raise a child together. And then my mom said unexpectedly: "If the God sent love in the body of a man of the same sex, then why should it be condemned?"