“This decision protects our citizens, our children”, assured on Telegram messaging Vyacheslav Volodin, the president of the lower house of Parliament (Duma), while the changes to the civil status, the surgical operations and the hormonal treatments were became accessible in Russia after the fall of the USSR.
Since the attack in Ukraine, the authorities have multiplied conservative measures, in particular against LGBT +, saying they want to eliminate behavior that they consider deviant and imported from the West. The Russian security services (FSB) even arrested a transgender activist on Thursday accused of “high treason” for the benefit of Ukraine. He faces life imprisonment.
To justify this bill, Vyacheslav Volodin assured Friday that surgical operations for gender reassignment had exploded in the United States over the past ten years. “What a monstrous trend! This is a path that leads to the degeneration of a nation. This is unacceptable for us,” pleaded Volodin.
Before the Duma, he also maintained that there would remain in Russia only “Sodom” if the country adopted laws similar to those of the countries of Europe, in reference to this mythical city of the Bible sometimes associated, according to interpretations, to violence and homosexuality.
The bill passed its third and final reading. It must now be validated by the Upper House of Parliament, the Council of the Federation, and then signed by President Vladimir Putin to enter into force, two steps which are generally formalities.
“Enemies of the People”
In a press release published on Friday, the Duma specifies that the text prohibits “any medical intervention” for gender reassignments, in particular surgical operations and hormonal therapies. Changing the gender designation in identity documents will also be prohibited.
Medical exceptions, on the decision of a special commission, will be possible in the event of “congenital anomalies” in children or genetic or endocrine diseases, specifies the Duma. Marriages involving a transgender person will be “annulled” after the law comes into force, the Duma says. Finally, transgender people will also be prohibited from having custody of or adopting children in Russia.
Deputy Duma Speaker and supporter of the bill, Pyotr Tolstoy, clarified that the latter measure was not retroactive and that Russian transgender people who had already adopted children would not lose custody of them.
An increasingly repressive policy against LGBT+ people
Before the adoption of the text, Ian Dvorkine, a 32-year-old psychologist, who heads a Russian NGO helping transgender people, Center T, told AFP that he feared an increase in suicides with this law. The Russian state now designates transgender people “as ‘enemies of the people’, deprives them of rights, supports, and outlaws them”, he laments.
The ban on hormonal therapy risks “feeding the black market of hormones” and their consumption without medical advice would represent serious risks, warns Ian Dvorkine. Asked about these concerns, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that they were “probably excessive”.
The Russian NGO Sphere, which defended LGBT + but was dissolved by the authorities last year, told AFP that the anti-transidentity law was in the “continuation of state attacks” against these communities. Since 2013, a law already prohibits in Russia the “propaganda” of “non-traditional sexual relations”, a text denounced by NGOs as an instrument regularly used to repress LGBT +.
At the end of 2022, this law was considerably extended. It now bans LGBT + “propaganda” from all audiences, in the media, on the Internet, in books and films. Previously, it only concerned minors.