Russia’s crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights enters a new chapter

In another major blow to the country’s embattled sexual minority population, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation that prohibits people from medically or legally changing their gender. The act was passed unanimously by both houses of parliament.

Medical interventions to change the sex of a person are now strictly banned in Russia, along with the practice of changing an individual’s gender in public records or official documents. Medical procedures aimed at treating congenital anomalies will be the only exception.

The act doesn’t allow transgender people to foster or adopt children, while invalidating marriages in which one person has “changed gender”. The prohibitions come in line with the government’s prominent campaign to shield what it views as “traditional values”.

A number of lawmakers in Russia call gender transitioning “pure satanism“. Proponents of the legislation believe it could protect the country from “western anti-family ideology”.

The crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights started a decade ago when the president first proclaimed a focus on “traditional family values”, supported by the Russian Orthodox church.

A major portion of the LGBT population there prefers keeping low profiles because of pervasive bitterness towards non-traditional sexuality. The Moscow city government passed an order in 2012, prohibiting gay pride parades for the next 100 years.

ALSO READ: More than 500,000 Hajj pilgrims arrive in Saudi Arabia’s Medina

The following year, the parliament unanimously passed a law banning any public endorsement of “non-traditional sexual relations” among minors.

While a constitutional reform from 2020 outlawed same-sex marriages, Putin signed a law last year to forbid “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among adults.