Ryazan is a sleepy city of half a million people, situated on the Oka River around 122 miles southeast of Moscow. Since becoming the first city in the Kievan Rus to fall to the Mongols, it has done little to claim space in the world’s history books.

In 2006 however, the Ryazan regional legislature made a quiet change to their administrative law that ended up echoing throughout the former Soviet Union. The amendment created a new offense: “public actions intended to propagandize homosexuality amongst minors.” In practice, this meant potential fines for public discussion of homosexuality in positive or even neutral terms.

The Ryazan amendment was taken up by local legislators in Arkhangelsk (2009), and Kostroma (2011). But it wasn’t until 2012 that the idea began to gain traction nationally. A version of the amendment was passed in several regions across Russia before being passed at the federal level in 2013. Copycat laws have since been discussed from Yerevan to Bishkek.

There is no single cause for the rapid spread of this legislative agenda. But one major factor is undoubtedly the unprecedented anti-government protests which accompanied Vladimir Putin’s re-election to the presidency of Russia in 2012.