by David Tuller

About the author: David Tuller is a San Francisco writer who covers gay and lesbian issues.

My Russian friend Sergei is a lean and gentle man. But when he recounts the years he languished in prison for the crime of loving another of his own sex his soft voice hardens and his impish grin disappears. Sergei is staying in California now on a student visa, and is scared to go back home. Russia’s brutal anti- sodomy law remains on the books, and hundreds of gays are still stashed away in labor camps and prisons. So my worried friend is considering an alternative legal strategy—applying for asylum based on his sexual orientation.

Until 1990, when Congress removed “sexual deviation” from the list of...