Putin signs extreme law banning Russians from changing gender
It’s the latest anti-LGBTQ+ measure put in place by Putin.
The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has signed a law which bans “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person”.
The likes of gender-affirming surgery and hormone replacement therapy (HRT) cannot be accessed by trans people.
It will also make it illegal for “the state registration of a change of gender without an operation.” The law was passed earlier this month in the Russian Parliament.
The new law from Putin will also annul marriages in which one person has “changed gender”.
It will also make it illegal for “the state registration of a change of gender without an operation”
Elsewhere, any person who has undergone gender reassignment surgery will not be allowed to adopt or foster a child.
The law enters into force straight away.
It comes after another anti-LGBTQ+ law was passed by the Kremlin in late 2022. This extended the ban on “propaganda” of LGBTQ+ relationships and lifestyles to include content for adults also.
Russia’s previously existing 2013 ‘gay propaganda’ law (officially the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values act) prohibited children from accessing material that is believed to “promote homosexual relationships”. It has been used to detain LGBTQ+ activists.
This was just weeks after Russia reportedly fined TikTok for failing to remove content that violated Russia’s anti-LGBTQ ‘gay propaganda’ laws
Streaming service Twitch was also issued a fine over an interview with a Ukrainian political figure.
Moscow’s Tagansky District Court fined TikTok 3 million roubles (roughly £44,800) on back in October 2022, according to Reuters.
The fine was based on the charges that TikTok promoted “non-traditional sexual values, videos featuring LGBT, feminism, and distorted representation of traditional sexual values,” according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Twitch was fined 4 million roubles (roughly £59,000) for hosting a ‘fake news’ interview with Oleksiy Arestovych, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The brand was already fined earlier on in 2022 for a different interview with Arestovych hosted on the platform.