In Russia, as in some other countries around the world, we are currently witnessing a wave of politically sanctioned homophobia, most concretely manifested in the 2013 law against “homosexual propaganda”. By examining Russian mainstream media reporting, this article aims to reconstruct a dominant narrative on homosexuality and LGBT rights. It is found that this narrative revolves around three tropes: 1) that non-heterosexuals are a threat to the nation, 2) that LGBT rights are about imposing the minority´s norms onto the majority; and 3) that LGBT rights is bound up with Western modernity, to which Russia offers an alternative. Discussing the findings in light of theories on nationalism, gender and sexuality, I argue that homophobia in Russia must be understood in a global geopolitical perspective: as an attempt to negotiate a meaningful international role for Russia in a world order where LGBT rights have become a symbolic marker of Western modernity.