Yoga in jails could make inmates gay & cause riots, complaint says; nonsense, authorities respond

A conservative senator raised a few eyebrows in Russian after it emerged that she objects to yoga classes being held in prisons. The complaint reportedly implies that yoga can turn inmates gay and lead to rioting.

Yoga classes were introduced in some pretrial detention facilities in Moscow as a pilot project last year. It was hailed as a big success by jail officials. But it turns out that not everyone was supportive. One Russian senator lodged a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office, requiring it to launch an official investigation into what yoga does for inmates, Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper reports.

The senator, Elena Mizulina, is a controversial figure in Russian politics. She is deeply conservative and has been behind several initiatives that some progressives regard as attempts to drag the country back to the Middle Ages. She has suggested restricting the right to abortion, discouraging divorce through taxation, raising the age of consent to 18, and enshrining Orthodox Christianity in the Russian constitution, to name but a few of her proposals.

According to the newspaper, her complaint cited an expert opinion that some yoga exercises can “lead to uncontrolled fluxes of libido and consequently homosexual relationships” among inmates. Aleksandr Dvorkin, a US-educated historian and Orthodox theologian who made a name for himself in Russia fighting quasi-religious cults, further speculated that if career criminals – who tend to be homophobic – suspect yoga practitioners of being gay, they would refuse to take food from their hands. “This may escalate into a protest riot,” he said.

The newspaper said the expert opinion was leaked to them by a source in the Prosecutor General’s Office, who is embarrassed that prosecutors have to act on the “bizarre complaint.”

After the public backlash sparked by the report, FSIN, Russia’s penitentiary body, stated that yoga classes will have a place in Russian jails.

“Our studies showed that people who practiced yoga had significantly fewer health complaints. It had a very positive effect,” FSIN Deputy Head Valery Maksimenko said in an interview with Govorit Moskva radio station. He said the pilot project which was held at two facilities will soon be expanded to other jails. The authorities may also add other health-boosting exercises like the Chinese technique of qigong.

“People practice it around the world and there’s no harm in it. It won’t make anyone gay,” the official said. “And even if it could, it’s a free country where everyone has a right to pick a path of his or her choosing. We don’t criminalize homosexuality.”

Practices like yoga or qigong that originate in foreign religious traditions are viewed with suspicion in some conservative religious circles in Russia. Some members believe they can be used to sneak in various beliefs that could end up leading people to eternal damnation. The majority of Russians are either indifferent to or welcome the health benefits these practices bring.

Dvorkin did not remain silent, swiftly launching a counterattack through Govorit Moskva radio station on Sunday. He accused the author of the piece published by Moskovsky Komsomolets – Eva Merkacheva – of being a “cultist” herself, as she practices the same type of yoga. The theologian said the part about homosexuals was deliberately taken out of context, and his letter was actually about the dangers of unstudied practices, as well as their alleged “incompatibility” with Christianity.

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