BBC NEWS World Europe By Patrick Jackson. BBC News Moscow
<--- Gay Moscow has been keeping its rainbow flags indoors.Fri, 17 February 2006. Public gestures of affection of the most innocent kind between a man and a woman, such as holding hands, can upset Sasha, a young gay man from Siberia.
They hurt him because much of Russian society rejects the right of he and his boyfriend to do the same.
However, if a bid to hold Russia's first Gay Pride parade pays off, Sasha and thousands of other gay men and women will take their sexual orientation to the streets of Moscow on 27 May.
It is a big "if" in the face of strong opposition from politicians who do not question the legal right of gay people to pursue their lifestyles in privacy, but do not want to see them making a show of it.
Clergy from Russia's two biggest faith groups, Russian Orthodox Christians and Muslims, have equally frowned upon the idea.
This week, the issue of the Moscow Pride electrified Moscow's media after a Muslim cleric was quoted as saying the paraders should be "thrashed by decent people".
It is a scenario which alarms Moscow's authorities in a year when Russia is entrusted with both stewardship of the G8 and, from 20 May, the Council of Europe - a body dedicated to promoting human rights.
Privacy and provocation.
Inna Svyatenko, chairwoman of Moscow City Council's security commission, does not have a problem with the city's gay community.
BEING GAY IN RUSSIA.
In Russian slang, a gay man is "blue" (goluboy) and a gay woman "pink" (rozovaya)
Homosexual acts in Russia were punishable by prison terms of up to five years until 1993
Sasha's story...
"This city and civic society here are very protective of our sexual minorities," she says.
Gay people work freely in the city and are greatly respected for their contribution in areas such as retail and the creative professions, according to Ms Svyatenko.
They have their own clubs and, she adds, you need only look out the window of her downtown office to see where a gay lifestyle store opened its doors recently. She argues against the parade on three grounds:
*that much of the gay community allegedly oppose it themselves
*that similar events in East European capital cities like Riga last year ended in violent clashes
*that the preferred route would cause massive traffic disruption.
According to her information, most gay people in Moscow do not want the Pride because "it is their private life and they do not want to put it on show" and because such an event could provoke violence.
Inna Svyatenko wants to avoid the clashes seen in Europe last year. "In our fragile society, do we really need to provoke a situation in which the ultra-right and so-called skinheads rise up and the law enforcement agencies are unable to guarantee the safety of the paraders?" she asks.
Of course, the police could suppress any disorder if necessary, she says, but nobody in the city authorities would be prepared to take responsibility for "artificially provoking the disorder".
To allow a parade down Tverskaya Street, Moscow's central artery, would cause massive disruption in a city already choked with traffic. "If the gays chose an area on the outskirts of the city or somewhere in Moscow Region, I think the authorities might take a different view," she says.
Inna Svyatenko accuses the organisers of the parade, and their supporters outside Russia, of "wanting to make a name for themselves without any thought for the impact of such an event on other people like them".
"I realise there are certain European countries where these parades have a long history and nobody cares but let's not drag Russia into this - Russia is not ready," she argues.
Breaking the iceThe word "pidor", a corruption of "pederast", is still one of the most common terms of abuse in Russia.
Whatever the local objections in Moscow, the parade would mark the first-ever Pride in Russia as a whole and public tolerance of gay people is still largely confined to a few big cities.
"Russia needs the parade because it will help the country to show that we are a tolerant society," argues Nikolai Alexeyev, the chief organiser of the Pride. If people had really maintained the status quo in our history... homosexuality would still be a crime.
"It will be a very strong attempt to break the ice between society and the gay community. People will understand that there are no reasons to be scared of sexual minorities."
Russian media, in his opinion, distort the image of gay people, portraying them as "perverts and people who only need pity".
Predicting a turnout of some 5,000, he strongly objects to moving the parade away from the centre though he is open to negotiation about the final route.
He also rejects the suggestion that many gay people do not want the Pride. Some gay businessmen, he suggests, are anxious about the Pride's possible commercial fallout, but, "at the end of the day, the fact is that activists and individuals support this event".
The Pride organiser links homophobia in Russia to poverty, saying the "more wealthy people are, the less they care about such things".
But some of the event's most vocal opponents are religious leaders, refusing to accept the validity of "non-traditional" sexual orientation, to use the Russian euphemism.
'Glorifying sin'Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of the Muslim Spiritual Board in Central Russia, told Interfax news agency that Muslim anti-Pride protests could be angrier than those seen abroad over the Muhammad cartoons.
But his reported call to "thrash" paraders was not taken up by his counterpart in Asian Russia, Nafigulla Ashirov, who went on a Moscow radio station to say the use of violence was unacceptable.
While also rejecting the use of violence, the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow has condemned the Pride as "homosexual propaganda and the glorification of sin".
Men interviewed in Moscow's new gay store did not believe the gay parade would happen simply because of the mounting hostility.
Its fate will not be decided until two weeks before it is due to be held, when the formal application for permission must be lodged with the Moscow mayor's office.
The mayor's office could not be reached for official comment but is believed to be strongly opposed.
Wilde's legacyAmong foreign figures lending support is Merlin Holland, grandson of Oscar Wilde, who, while not gay himself, plans to be in Moscow.
"I am happy to add my voice to those raised in protest against homophobia; my grandfather was imprisoned in 1895 simply for being a homosexual and our family was almost destroyed as a result," he wrote in a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin this month.
Nikolai Alexeyev passionately believes in the need to make a stand, whatever the risk of a backlash. The Pride is timed to fall on the 13th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Russia.
"If people had really maintained the status quo in our history, the Cold War would have never ended, Boris Yeltsin would have never come to power and homosexuality would still be a crime in Russia," he says.
Meanwhile, in the Moscow gay store, the little plastic rainbow flags of the international gay rights movement stay firmly on the shelves and the store's business card refers only to "our theme".
Evidently, for some, a "love that dare not speak its name" must remain anonymous in Russia.