Finally, a ‘gay couple holding hands in public’ video that won’t ruin your day

In the past two weeks, viral videos from Ukraine, Russia, and Israel have shown us how dangerous it can be for gay men to holds hands in public. But a new version of the same "social experiment" offers some hope for humanity.

The experiment is a simple one to stage. Two men walk down a street. They hold hands. A hidden camera rolls. See what happens.

The experiments in Kyiv, Moscow, and Jerusalem were very hard to watch. The men were verbally abused, repeatedly, and in Kyiv and Russia, they were physically attacked. 

Lorenzo and Pedro, a gay couple in Portugal who make comedy and cooking videos for YouTube, saw the Kyiv and Moscow videos and were disgusted. They decided to try the experiment themselves in Portugal's capital, Lisbon. And the results were very, very different.

"There was no hate, threat, punches — not even a single verbal abuse," Lorenzo reported in the video. Some people stared, but he and Pedro felt that these weren't "negative stares," but rather evidence of surprise or curiosity. (Lorenzo also wondered whether their height difference attracted extra attention. He's 6'5" and Pedro is 5'7".)

Before shooting the video, Lorenzo and Pedro rarely held hands in public. Maybe they were a "bit frightened," they explained. Seeing how people of Lisbon reacted to them change that. 

"We felt respected and free," he said. "We felt what any straight or gay couple should feel: comfortable."

More from GlobalPost: 31 reasons why we should all be living in Lisbon right now

In one sense, it's not surprising that Lorenzo and Pedro were much better received in Lisbon than the hand-holding men in Moscow. In recent years, Portugal and Russia have followed near opposite trajectories in terms of LGBT rights. Portugal legalized same-sex marriage in 2010 and has passed several laws in the last decade designed to protect LGBT citizens from discrimination. Russia has done the opposite, enacting laws like its 2013 ban on "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations," which in effect erases homosexuality from public life, and a 2014 law that allows police to arrest foreign visitors suspected of being gay. Human Rights Watch warned in a December 2014 report that anti-gay violence and public harassment were on the rise in Russia. So the reaction to the Moscow experiment was disturbing, but not surprising.

But it's also true that laws of the land don't always change behavior on the street, and there was no guarantee that Portugal's pro-LGBT laws would mean that Lorenzo and Pedro would necessarily feel "respected and free" while holding hands on the streets of Lisbon. They did.

Score one for Lisbon.