The Russian Health Ministry has been instructed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to establish a psychiatric facility to study behaviour of LGBT people, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko announced as reported by IStories.
Murashko broke the news while answering the questions posed by lawmakers in Russia’s lower house of parliament. MP Anatoly Vasserman addressed him with a question whether the ministry was studying the LGBT community’s ideas on gender roles and sexuality “in accordance with the reality”. The minister explained that Russian scientific hubs were already engaged in this work, particularly to study social behaviour.
The Parni+ LGBT portal has slammed Murashko’s comments as a sign that Russia is preparing to roll out forcible conversion therapy, a set of pseudoscientific psychological and physiological practices aimed at “treating and changing” a person’s sexuality and gender identity or expression. Earlier, UN experts called to ban conversion therapy, comparing it to torture.
On 14 June, Russia’s lower house of parliament unanimously adopted a bill, banning trans people from changing gender markers in documents and undergoing “medical interventions”. The bill explicitly prohibits doctors from performing gender-affirming surgeries, except for cases of treating “congenital physiological anomalies”.
