So a law ceases to remain a law once it is invalidated? Then my sources must be wrong for referring to these "laws" on the books. You said I couldn't legally call them laws, now you're saying I can't consider them laws, and yet they are still referred to as laws in journalism. To clear up any misunderstanding I went to law.com and found a definition of "law" in the context we're using here:
2) n. a statute, ordinance or regulation enacted by the legislative branch of a government and signed into law, or in some nations created by decree without any democratic process. This is distinguished from "natural law," which is not based on statute, but on alleged common understanding of what is right and proper (often based on moral and religious precepts as well as common understanding of fairness and justice).
Those laws-but-not-actually-laws we have been mentioning above are statutes: it took a legislature to sign them in. Is constitutionality part of the definition of what a law is? No, which is why we can call unconstitutional laws "unconstitutional
laws". You might not consider them a law, but I do - to the extent that a piece of writing is enacted by a legislature and signed, that piece of writing is law. Let's look at these laws-but-not-actually-laws. Are they statutes? Yes. Were they de-enacted by a legislature, whatever that means? No. Are they un-signed? No. So they're laws. I'll stop calling it a law when it ceases to exist though, then there'd be no statute for me to refer to.
Let's take your point about the non-existence of laws criminalizing homosexuality in the US. How about we take a look at Uganda's recent anti-homosexuality bill:
It defines the offence of homosexuality - in section 2 - as:
a) homosexual sex (which I will not go into detail for the benefit of some of our readers)
b) more homosexual sex
c) touching another person with the intent of committing homosexuality.
Section 3 refers to "aggravated homosexuality" which is a more "serious" version of the acts listed above, section 4 refers to "attempt to commit homosexuality" which is again based on the definition outlined in section 2, section 5 and 6 recognize compensation and confidentiality of victims of these "homosexual acts", section 7 refers to advising others to commit homosexuality, section 8 refers to conspiracy to commit homosexuality, I'm going to skip a few and go to section 13 which refers to what to do in case of somebody promoting homosexuality. The important point here is that all subsequent sections refer to "homosexuality" as it is outlined in section 2.
So even in Uganda homosexuality is legal, as only homosexual acts are prohibited but not the sexuality. But it's true. Even in Ugandan law homosexuality is defined as "same gender or same sex sexual acts". As long as you stay away from associating yourself with "homosexual acts" your sexuality is not being banned under that law.
I don't think I need to say more about the futility of semantic arguments.
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Fortunately in Russia you can have sexual relations with your partner if you are a man and not be sent to jail for it. Unfortunately, I can be a straight man but fly a rainbow flag and be sent to jail because "homosexuality is criminalized". I don't see how you can equivocate banning publicly-directed expressions of support for homosexuality as banning homosexuality. What would you say of self-hating homosexuals who would never speak publicly about their own sexuality? What would you say of closeted folks? I don't see how their sexuality is banned.
This is what the law actually says (translated in English, I can't speak Russian but I'm going with what the author says):
Propaganda is the act of distributing information among minors that 1) is aimed at the creating nontraditional sexual attitudes, 2) makes nontraditional sexual relations attractive, 3) equates the social value of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations, or 4) creates an interest in nontraditional sexual relations.
Not exactly used for anything, however, we generally assume the worst whenever we speak of Russia.
source for uganda bill: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7pFotabJnTmYzFiMWJmY2UtYWYxMi00MDY2LWI4NWYtYTVlOWU1OTEzMzk0/edit?hl=en&pli=1
source for contents of russia law: https://www.policymic.com/articles/58649/russia-s-anti-gay-law-spelled-out-in-plain-english