Metropolitan Kornily Titov, above, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church, said men should stop shaving to ‘protect themselves from homosexuality’.

According to PinkNews, Kornily believes that men who have beards are less likely to be “corrupted” and engage in same-sex relationships.

The religious leader declared:

God set down certain rules. The Lord created everyone with a beard. No man can resist his creator.

He described as “monstrous” the fact that men’s clothing and hairstyles were changing.

He also lamented the fact that the beard’s apparently special status had:

Completely disappeared from the Catholic West.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, above left, held a meeting with Kornily earlier this year to discuss the Church and “prospects for its development”, according to the president’s website.

Putin almost always appears in public with a clean-shaven face.

It is not clear what Kornily makes of this fact.

If Kornily believes that beards will fend off gay men, and send them shrieking into the night, he wrong. A recent survey published in Evolution and Human Behavior showed beards attract male homosexuals more than they do heterosexual women.

The survey also suggested that, for gay men, guys with thicker facial hair make better longer-term partners.