Vyacheslav Volodin, Chairman of Russia’s State Duma, has put forward a bill on fines for “promoting non-traditional sexual behaviour,” reads the Duma website.
“Family, motherhood and childhood in their traditional understanding, taken from the ancestors, are the values that ensure the continuous change of generations; they preserve and develop the multiethnic population of the Russian Federation, and therefore require special protection from the state,” reads the explanatory note.
Only “LGBT propaganda towards minors” is illegal under current Russian law. The proposed changes to the law were suggested by Sevastopol lawmakers.
“Promoting non-traditional sexual behaviour,” as they call it, means “dissemination of information aimed at forming non-traditional sexual attitudes, the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relations, a distorted idea of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relations and the imposition of information that arouses interest in such relationships.”
The lawmakers claim that banning “LGBT propaganda does not prohibit providing such information in a neutral manner.”
The bill introduces huge fines from 40,000 (€620) to 500,000 (€7,800) rubles for individuals and up to 10 million (~€155,000) for corporate entities. Foreign citizens or stateless individuals may face up to 500,000 rubles in fines and expulsion from Russia should they violate.
Russia’s law on prohibition of “promoting non-traditional sexual behaviour towards minors,” adopted in 2013, was declared discriminatory by the Strasbourg Court as it violates the European Convention on Human Rights.
