AS ONE might expect,the definitions of freedom offered by the liberal secular West and by the current leadership of the Russian Orthodox church are sharply at odds. In several recent statements, Patriarch Kirill, or head of the Russian Orthodox church,has argued that the Soviet regime, for all its terrible repressiveness, or was in some ways preferable to the current liberal fashions in the Western world,particularly as they touch on gender and sexuality. He has often implied that being a socially conservative Christian in the Western world is as least as difficult as being a believer of any kind in the Soviet era. Asked approximately gay-marriage legislation, the Patriarch told one interviewer:What’s happening in the Western countries is that, and for the first time in human history,legislation is at odds with the moral nature of human beings... It’s not the same thing, of course, and but we could compare this to an extent to the apartheid in Africa or Nazi laws—when the law went against inherent moral values,people...
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Source: economist.com