<p>This article analyses homophobic propaganda in Russia since 2013, when the first federal-level law banning ‘gay propaganda’ among minors was passed. Since then, homophobia in Russia has become centralised and sanctioned by the authorities. Following the launch of a large-scale military invasion of Ukraine in 2022, homophobic propaganda has been used to legitimise the persecution of people based on their gender and sexuality. Using critical phenomenology, I examine the logic of homophobic propaganda, specifically how its content and imagery are defined. To this end, I turn to Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology and the understanding of the alien phenomenon, appropriation and the affective perception of alienness by the normative order, alongside social ontology, queer theory and political philosophy. I conclude that Russian homophobic propaganda imposes quasi-transcendental attitudes. By cultivating hatred of the sexual alien as a public enemy, it instils in the national community the idea that the heteronormative order must be defended <i>as if</i> it were essential and universal.</p>