TALLINN – Russian lawmakers on Thursday approved a tightened version of a bill banning sex reassignment procedures, with additional clauses announcing marriages in which a person has “changed sex” and barring transgender people from being foster or adoptive parents to become.
The bill was swiftly and unanimously approved by the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, at the important second reading, and lawmakers have scheduled the third and final reading for Friday. There is little doubt that the bill A heavy blow to Russia’s oppressed LGBTQ+ communityis being passed as part of the Kremlin’s crusade to protect what it sees as the country’s “traditional values”.
The bill bans all “medical procedures aimed at changing a person’s sex” as well as changing gender in official documents and public records.
New clauses added to the bill will also amend Russia’s Family Code, listing a change of sex as a reason for marriage annulment and adding those “who have changed their sex” to a list of those not caring – or become adoptive parents.
Lawmakers are portraying the move as protecting Russia from “Western anti-family ideology,” with some calling the gender transition “pure Satanism.”
It has rocked the country’s transgender community, drawing criticism not only from LGBTQ+ rights advocates but also from the medical community.
Lyubov Vinogradova, executive director of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia, described the bill as “misanthropic” in an interview with The Associated Press. Sex reassignment procedures “should not be completely banned, because there are people for whom this is the only way … to live normally and find peace with themselves,” Vinogradova said.
The crackdown on LGBTQ+ people began a decade ago, when President Vladimir Putin first announced a focus on “traditional family values,” a move vehemently supported — and to some extent promoted — by the Russian Orthodox Church .
In 2013, the Kremlin passed the first law restricting LGBTQ+ rights, known as the “gay propaganda” law, which banned any public endorsement of “non-traditional sexual relations” between minors. In 2020, Putin pushed through a constitutional reform banning same-sex marriage.
But the authorities escalated their rhetoric to protect the country from what they called “degrading” Western influence after sending troops to Ukraine last year in what human rights activists saw as an attempt to legitimize the war.
Lawmakers last year decided to ban “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among adults. This initiative was quickly approved and in December 2022 any positive or even neutral depiction of LGBTQ+ people in films, literature or media was banned.
The bill severely restricting transgender rights came a few months later.
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