The Federation Council, the upper house of Russia’s Parliament, has unanimously approved the controversial bill banning gender transition in Russia, as per the state body’s official website.
“If we’re being vilified and criticised, it means we’re doing everything right,” the North Ossetia senator Taymuraz Mamsurov said during the session. He added, “let them have their gay parades over there while we celebrate Victory Day over here”.
The speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko said that she had looked up the reaction of the foreign media on this bill — according to her, the articles she saw had positive reactions.
The next and final step is Russian President Vladimir Putin signing the bill, thus turning it into a law.
The bill seeks to ban gender reassignment surgery and hormonal treatment except in cases of “congenital physiological deviations”. It will also prohibit changes to official documents on the basis of medical “sex change” certificates.
The bill will allow to annul marriages in cases when one or both spouses undergoes a “sex change”. The amendment will be retroactive, rendering invalid those marriages where one or both spouses had transitioned before the law’s introduction.
A further amendment will prohibit couples, where one of the partners has undergone a “sex change”, from adopting children. Moreover, persons who have undergone a transition abroad will be unable to receive Russian documents listing the correct gender identity. This amendment will not be retroactive — there are no plans to take back the children adopted by transgender people.
On 14 July, the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s Parliament, approved the bill in the third, final reading.
In June, Russian lawmakers voted unanimously to adopt the bill in the first reading. Nearly 400 MPs are listed as the bill’s authors. “Why are we doing this? By hindering Western anti-family ideology, we are saving Russia for future generations — with its family and cultural values and traditions,” said Pyotr Tolstoy, one of the authors.
