The bill, which also outlaws changing one’s gender on official documents, was approved by the State Duma on Friday.
President Vladimir Putin and the upper chamber must now approve it; these are formalities.
The law, according to Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, “will protect our citizens and our children.”
Mr. Volodin similarly referred to gender-affirming surgery as a “path to the degeneration of the nation” in a telegraph message on Friday.
“We are the only European country that opposes all that is happening in the States, in Europe, and does everything to save families and traditional values,” he declared during the debate on Friday. And we must realize that if we don’t enact the law, if we don’t outlaw gender transition, there will be no future.
On Friday, during the bill’s final reading, new modifications were made to prevent transgender people from adopting children and to void unions where one partner had undergone gender reassignment.
LGBT rights organizations warned that the law would seriously affect the health of those who were denied access to care.
Yan Dvorkin, director of the Center T organization, which offers assistance to Russian transgender persons, called the bill “absolutely fascist” and “deprives people of medical care and any basic human rights.”
“It is very difficult psychologically for people to worry that the government might label them as enemies of the people and rob them of their rights, rob them of any assistance, and leave them in a lawless state,”
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, attempted to allay the worries, telling reporters in Moscow that some of the issues brought up by opponents of the measure were “perhaps excessive.”
The only openly transgender politician in Russia, Yulia Alyoshina, however, accused the administration of seeking to “repress this small group, which is already discriminated against and stigmatized.”
According to the agency, he gave money to OVD-info, a group that monitors human rights that Russia will outlaw in 2021 due to its laws on foreign agents.
Between 2016 and 2022, 2,990 persons in Russia legally altered their gender, according to the interior ministry. There are 146 million people living in the nation.
The bill follows the adoption of regulations last year that promoted anti-LGBT propaganda and represents a further erosion of civil rights in Russia.
Any public representation or expression of LGBT culture was prohibited under the ban. For “propagandizing non-traditional sexual relations,” individuals can be punished up to 400,000 roubles (£5,400), while organizations can be penalized up to 5 million roubles (£68,500).
The Orthodox Church and the government have formed a stronger cooperation in recent years, with the government supporting the church’s orthodox social viewpoint.
President Putin has often denounced trans rights and claimed that LGBT lifestyles are incompatible with traditional Russian norms.
Just one day prior to the most recent assault, Russia’s internal security agency, the FSB, stated that it had detained a transgender rights advocate on treason charges for backing Ukraine.
The man was seen being rammed into a wall by armed officers wearing tactical gear in video published by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency before being taken away in a vehicle.
Share your thoughts