russians and eastern europeans in general do seem to be disproportionately homophobic compared to the rest of europe ..
is it a religious thing or do they just have poor education or what?
Simple - closet homosexuals usually publicly display the most homophophia. They likely would have been bred out of existence, but luckily german men often cross the border to various eastern european countries and seed their women with daughters and the armenians come and seed their leftover women with boys - hence why russian women so tall and beautiful and russian men so short, potbellied and gnarled like dwarves.
This is also why Russia's biggest export after oil and mining products (dwarves) is russian mail-order brides.
This obviously is based on solid scientific evidence.