Russian lawmakers on Wednesday voted in the first reading of a bill banning the adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries that allow gender transition, a new sign of Russia’s ultra-conservative direction.
President Vladimir Putin advocates a conservative line on social issues, seeing it as an extension of the fight against the West.
On Tuesday, MPs began examining a bill banning the “propaganda” of childless living, in the midst of a demographic crisis, amplified by the conflict in Ukraine.
The ban voted on Wednesday concerns citizens of countries that authorize “sex change through medical intervention, including through the use of medication” and the modification of the gender indicated in “identity documents,” according to the legislation.
Its aim is to prevent “any adoption of Russian children by representatives of LGBT communities,” details the explanatory text accompanying the bill.
In total, 397 MPs voted in favour of the text on Wednesday and only one against.
“With this law, we are protecting the child,” said Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, a close friend of Vladimir Putin and a fervent supporter of the bill, after the vote.
The MPs behind the initiative said they wanted to prevent adoptive parents from being able to “change sex” or “change the sex of the adopted child”, who must be, they stressed, “raised in a traditional family”.
Russia itself passed a law in July 2023 banning gender transitions and prohibiting transgender people from adopting children.
Since 2013, the country has already banned adoption by foreign homosexual couples or unmarried nationals of countries where same-sex unions are legal.
To enter into force, the bill must be passed after a total of three readings in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, then by the Federation Council (upper house) and be signed into law by Vladimir Putin, the latter two steps usually being just a formality.
“Decadent” West
The Russian president sees his country as the standard-bearer of “traditional” values, in the face of what he considers to be the moral “decadence” of the West due to its tolerance towards LGBT+ people.
Vyacheslav Volodin, interviewed about this law in mid-September by Komsomolskaya Pravda radio, said that “Europe, like the United States, is sick”, referring in particular to the participation of transgender athletes in sports competitions.
He had attacked people “who were men yesterday and who today call themselves women by having artificially changed their surname and sex, but who have not become women.”
This bill replaces another, proposed by MPs in August 2022 but ultimately never voted on, on the ban on adoption by nationals of “unfriendly” countries.
Tensions with the West, already high, were increased tenfold by the start of the Kremlin’s offensive against Ukraine in February 2022.
Excluding countries that allow gender transition effectively amounts to excluding “NATO countries”, where it is generally permitted, the MEPs note in their explanatory text.
The law, if it comes into force, is expected to have primarily symbolic significance. In 2023, only six Russian children were adopted by foreign citizens, according to official figures.
The figure began to fall after Americans banned the adoption of Russian children in 2012.
The measure was in response to sanctions imposed by Washington against senior officials involved in the death in Russian custody of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009.
In a sign of the repression of sexual minorities in Russia, the country’s Supreme Court banned the “international LGBT movement” for “extremism” at the end of 2023, a vague formulation opening the door to heavy prison sentences.