By Brandon Drey. Media: Dailywire.
Lower-level Russian parliamentarians unanimously passed a law Thursday that would ban the distribution of materials promoting homosexuality, pedophilia, and gender reassignment.
More than 300 representatives of the State Duma, including the chairman, authored the new law, which imposes heavy fines of up to 10 million rubles ($165,000) for violating the ban by promoting such propaganda using online channels, media, or in public. Foreign citizens and stateless persons who violate the law would also face expulsion from the Russian Federation.
Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said the law would help protect the motherlandās traditions and values for her children and the future of Russia from the ādarkness spread by the United States and European states.ā
Volodin called the U.S. the ācenter of this sodom in the worldā in response to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who had allegedly proposed Russian representatives withdraw the draft law.
āThere is no need to impose alien values āāon us,ā Volodin said. āYou destroyed yours ā weāll see how it all ends. But itās definitely sad because this is sodom ā thereās no other way to say it.ā
āLet them live there, but donāt bother us,ā Volodin added.
Russian lawmakers have already banned propaganda promoting homosexuality among minors nearly a decade ago and passed amendments to its constitution outlawing same-sex marriage in 2020.
Alexander Khinstein, one of the billās authors, referred to LGBT ideology as āhybrid warfare.ā
āLGBT today is an element of hybrid warfare, and in this hybrid warfare,ā Khinstein said, according to Reuters. āWe must protect our values, our society, and our children.ā
Political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann said in an interview from Cologne, Germany, that the law would prohibit anything showing LGBT relations as āsocially acceptableā or āequal to so-called traditional family relations or sexual relations.ā
āPeople ā authors, publishers, just people ā will think twice before even mentioning anything related to LGBT,ā Schulmann said, according to Reuters.
Kseniya Mikhailova, a member of the LGBT support group Vykhod (āComing Outā), told Reuters that the new law could make same-sex kissing in public illegal, but would not put adults-only gay bars or clubs out of business.
Dilya Gafurova, the head of LGBTQ rights group Sfera, told Agence France-Presse that it was ādisturbing that the state is saying LGBT+ people are a Western invention,ā adding āthere is nothing wrong with us and nothing that needs to be hushed up.ā
The law still needs approval from the upper house of parliament and President Vladimir Putin before taking effect.