(Moscow) The upper house of the Russian Parliament on Wednesday approved a bill banning the adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries where gender transition is legal.
Posted at 1:37 p.m.
The Federation Council also approved bills banning the dissemination of materials encouraging people not to have children.
The bills, which have already been approved by the lower house, will now be submitted to President Vladimir Putin for signing into law. They follow a series of laws that have repressed sexual minorities and reinforced old traditional Russian values.
According to the Speaker of the Lower House, Vyacheslav Volodin, who is among the authors of the new bill, “it is extremely important to eliminate possible dangers in the form of gender reassignment that adopted children may face in these countries” .
The adoption ban would apply to at least 15 countries, most of them in Europe, as well as Canada, Australia and Argentina. The adoption of Russian children by American citizens was already banned in 2012.
Other bills approved by lawmakers Wednesday ban what is described as “propaganda” about not having children and impose fines of up to 5 million rubles (about C$70,000). Its supporters have argued that public arguments against having children are part of so-called “Western” efforts to weaken Russia by encouraging its population decline.
Countering “Western liberalism”
Mr. Putin and other senior officials have increasingly called in recent years for respect for so-called “traditional” values to counter Western liberalism. As Russia’s population declines, Mr. Putin has made statements in favor of large families and last year urged women to have up to eight children.
Last year, Russia banned gender transition medical procedures and the Supreme Court declared the LGBTQ+ “movement” extremist. In 2022, Mr Putin signed a law banning the dissemination of LGBTQ+ information to people of all ages – extending a 2013 ban on disseminating such material to minors.
Since sending troops to Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin leader has repeatedly called the West “satanic” and accused it of trying to undermine Russia by exporting its “liberal ideologies.” Independent journalists, regime critics, activists and opposition figures in Russia have come under increasing pressure from the government in recent years – pressure that is intensifying significantly in the context of the conflict in Ukraine.
Hundreds of nongovernmental organizations and individuals have been designated “foreign agents,” a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations.
On Wednesday, Parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, gave preliminary approval to a bill that would bar those who have been designated as “foreign agents” from accessing their income. The measure would freeze all their income generated in Russia in special accounts and would only allow them to access these funds if their “foreign agent” status was revoked.
Mr. Volodin, Speaker of the Lower House, said the bill aimed to prevent “traitors to the motherland from enriching themselves at the expense of Russian citizens.”
