The final step in outlawing gender-affirming practises was completed on Monday with the signing of new legislation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, dealing a fatal blow to the country’s already persecuted LGBTQ+ minority.
The bill, which was approved unanimously by both chambers of parliament, bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one’s gender in official documents and public records. Medical treatment for congenital abnormalities will be the lone exception.
Additionally, it invalidates unions in which one partner has “changed gender” and prohibits transgender people from becoming foster or adoptive parents.
The Kremlin’s campaign to defend what it sees as the nation’s “traditional values” is supposed to be the cause of the ban. Legislators claim that the act is necessary to protect Russia from “Western anti-family ideology,” and some have even called gender changing “pure satanism.”
When Putin first advocated an emphasis on “traditional family values,” endorsed by the Russian Orthodox Church, the persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals in Russia began ten years ago.
The Kremlin passed legislation outlawing any public support of “nontraditional sexual relations” between adolescents in 2013.
Putin pushed for constitutional change in 2020 that forbade same-sex unions, and he approved legislation last year outlawing “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among adults as well.
