In a small psychologist’s office in Almaty, a young man speaks in a low voice. He talks about living two lives—one for his family, and another for himself. Sitting across from him is a counselor who has long since learned to hear what lies between the words. In this room, the truth can exist—if only for one hour a week.
Table of Contents
The Invisible Cargo
Almaty, Tbilisi, Minsk, Yerevan, Tashkent, St. Petersburg, Moscow—each of these cities claims, in its own way, to be modern and cosmopolitan. Each has coffee shops with a hipster aesthetic, IT companies with open-plan offices and talk of “the team.” And in each—people who put on a mask every morning before stepping out of their bedrooms.
“I see people who have been pretending to be straight in front of their families for years—controlling their gestures, watching their tone of voice, and carefully choosing every word,” says Aigerim, a queer-affirmative psychologist from Almaty who has been working with young adults for eight years. “They aren’t ashamed of who they are. They’re afraid of losing their families. Those are two different things.”
This fear is well documented. According to a report by ILGA-Europe and regional studies by LGBTQ+ organizations, the rate of depression and anxiety disorders among queer youth in CIS countries is one and a half to two times higher than the average for the general population. “This isn’t an innate vulnerability,” explains the psychologist. “It’s a result of their environment. From childhood, people hear that being this way means being wrong. By the time they come to terms with themselves, they’ve long since learned to hide.”
"When are you getting married?"
This question—a ritual at any family gathering—sounds like a slap in the face to a 27-year-old office worker from Tashkent. “They bring it up casually, just in passing,” he says. “And I laugh and change the subject. And then I feel for a long time like I’ve betrayed myself.”
Aigerim calls this a “performance of normality.” Constant self-control: how you sit, how you look, how you talk about other people’s weddings. "This isn't paranoia—it's learned behavior. Emotional labor that never ends.".
According to data from the Russian LGBTQ+ group “Russian LGBT Network,” collected before the legislation was tightened, the majority of queer people surveyed in Russia had never come out to their parents—precisely out of fear of rejection.
Researchers have observed similar patterns in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Belarus. “Even in educated families, being queer is often perceived as an illness or a failure,” says the psychologist. “Or as a Western influence. Something foreign that has happened to their child.”
Loneliness as a Home
In conversations with the respondents, one word came up again and again: loneliness.
“I can only be my true self around my queer friends,” says a master’s student from Minsk. “With them, I talk normally and laugh normally. Everywhere else, I’m a different person.”
Aigerim explains the mechanism: "Isolation starts as a form of protection. You shut yourself off so that no one can hurt you. But you pay for that safety with intimacy. And gradually, you start to think that loneliness is the only place where you're safe.".
A young man from Almaty describes it differently: "It's like constantly carrying something heavy on your chest. You breathe—but never to your full capacity."
Home as a Stage
In post-Soviet culture, the home is an almost sacred space. Family, a shared table, “everything among ourselves.” For many queer people, it is precisely the home that becomes the source of the greatest tension.
One of the respondents—who works in the HR department of a large company in Tbilisi—says that He made up a girlfriend. She shows her parents her photos. “It’s easier than trying to explain something they’ll never accept,” he says. “Sometimes it feels like I’m living in two parallel worlds, and I don’t truly exist in either of them.”
Another respondent from Bishkek says that before every visit home, he mentally rehearses his conversations: what words to avoid, where not to look, and how to steer the conversation away from the topic of weddings. “It’s exhausting,” he says. “You arrive home tired. You leave even more tired.”
Aigerim calls this “the second burden”: “You’re not just hiding your identity—you’re censoring every emotion. It erodes your self-esteem slowly but inexorably.”
Laws and Beliefs
The legal climate in the CIS countries has deteriorated sharply over the past decade. In Russia, in 2023, the Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT movement” as extremist. In Kyrgyzstan in 2023, a law was passed criminalizing the “propaganda” of same-sex relationships. In Uzbekistan, male homosexuality remains a criminal offense. Georgia, long considered relatively open, enshrined a ban on same-sex unions in its constitution in 2024.
Against this backdrop, even those who live in large cities and work in relatively liberal environments feel that changes in the law are creating an atmosphere in which silence is no longer a choice but a necessity.
“Laws shape the social climate,” says Aigerim. “When the state officially labels your very existence as a threat—it seeps into families, into schools, into people’s minds. It becomes even harder for people to accept themselves.”
A student from Tbilisi sees education as the only long-term solution: "If schools taught us that people are all different, we wouldn't grow up believing that there's something wrong with us."
The World Health Organization notes that stigma and social exclusion remain the main barriers to LGBTQ+ people’s access to mental health care—regardless of the country.
Aigerim adds a local dimension: "We have catastrophically few queer affirmative specialists. People come to a psychologist and hear that they need to "improve". It's not help, it's an additional trauma."
"I just want to be normal."
Everyone I managed to talk to wanted one thing—and it wasn’t coming out, or visibility, or flags in the streets. Just to live without constant fear. “I don’t want to be brave,” one of the respondents says quietly. “I just want to be normal.”
Aigerim remains silent for a long time when I repeat those words.
“That phrase says it all,” she finally says. “For many queer people, freedom isn’t about being loud or visible. It’s simply the ability to exist without hiding. Every day. In their own home.”
The respondents' names have been changed, and no personal information is disclosed. All materials are published with the participants' consent.
Sources for the research and facts mentioned in this article:
1. Legal Climate — ILGA-Europe, Annual Review 2024 (Central Asia) Covers events in Central Asian countries in 2023: criminalization, crackdowns, and lack of protection. → https://www.ilga-europe.org/files/uploads/2024/02/2024_full_annual_review.pdf
2. Uzbekistan — Criminal Prosecution (Article 120 of the Criminal Code) Article 120 punishes “voluntary sexual intercourse between men” with up to 3 years in prison. In 2024, new criminal prosecutions were reported, including 14 cases involving transgender women in Samarkand. → https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/uzbekistan/
3. Kyrgyzstan — Adoption of the “Propaganda Law” (2023) In 2023, the president signed a package of laws restricting LGBTQ+ rights based on the Russian model. → https://ilga.org/news/laws-on-us-2024-lgbti-human-rights/ (ILGA World, Laws on Us, 2024)
4. Russia — Rise in Anti-LGBT Sentiment Following the 2022–2023 Laws Опрос Russian Field (август 2023): 62% россиян поддерживают ограничение прав гомосексуалов (в 2013 году таких было 19%). → https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6185676
5. Russia — Rise in Violence Against LGBTQ+ People in 2023 According to data from the organizations “Vykhod” and “Sfera,” in 2023, 43.5% of respondents experienced violence or pressure because of their identity (in 2022— — 30%). → https://istories.media/stories/2024/05/21/hate-crimes-against-lgbt/
6. Russia — Designation of the “LGBT movement” as extremist (November 2023) The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has banned the “international LGBT movement” as an extremist organization. → https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Права_ЛГБТ_в_России (со ссылками на первичные источники)
7. Mental Health of LGBT Adolescents in Russia Academic article: Lapshina, T.N., Kochetkova, A.S. (2016) — “The Mental Health of LGBT Adolescents and Young Adults: A Challenge for Russian Psychologists.” Of 292 LGBTQ+ adolescents, 35.6% had contemplated suicide due to homophobia. → https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324017223
8. ILGA-Europe Rainbow Map 2025 — Country Rankings Russia and Azerbaijan each scored 2 out of a possible 100 on the index of legal protections for LGBTQ+ people. → https://rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org/
9. ILGA-Europe — Health of LGBTQ+ People (Health4LGBTI) LGBTQ+ people are at a significantly higher risk of depression, anxiety disorders, and suicidal thoughts compared to the general population. → https://www.ilga-europe.org/campaign/health4lgbti-reducing-health-inequalities-experienced-by-lgbti-people/
10. ILGA-Europe — Annual Review 2026 (latest edition) It documents the shrinking of civic space across Europe and Central Asia, including “propaganda” laws in Belarus. → https://www.ilga-europe.org/report/annual-review-2026/
11. Clarification: The statistic that depression rates are “one and a half to two times higher” is a consolidated finding from international studies (ILGA Health4LGBTI, ResearchGate), not a single specific figure for the CIS. Data from a Russian study (Lapshina, 2016).
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