2023-11-22 19:49:05
The Russian Ministry of Justice filed a request on Friday, November 17, with the country’s Supreme Court asking it to ban the “international LGBT movement”. According to the ministry, various “signs and manifestations of extremist orientation” would have been identified in the activities of this movement, “including incitement to social and religious hatred”.
This request, on which the Russian Supreme Court must rule on November 30, has provoked a certain circumspection: there is in fact no organization in the name of “international LGBT movement” in Russia. But Russian activists fear that the repression will fall on all associations and groups providing information and assistance to homosexual and transgender people. Already used to incarcerate opponents of the Kremlin, the charge of“extremism” is punishable in Russia by up to ten years of imprisonment.
Repression against the community is nothing new in Russia. It began in 2013, with a law prohibiting “homosexual propaganda” among minors. However, it has gotten worse since the start of the invasion of Ukraine. In November 2022, the scope of the ban on “homosexual propaganda” was extended to all citizens, and no longer just to minors. In July 2023, a new law banned gender transition.
Against the “decadent West”
“With the war in Ukraine, the West is clearly designated as the enemy. This pushes the Russian authorities to position themselves as a bulwark against “Western values”.” says sociologist Anna Colin Lebedev. This positioning responds to an identity logic internally but also internationally, believes the researcher. “In my opinion, Russia is also seeking to show that a community of values unites it with its partners like China and Iran, by saying: ‘We too are against the decadent West.’ »
A logic that is well illustrated by the ban on gender transitions, a until recently marginal subject in Russian public debate. Likewise, abortion, very widespread in Russia since the Soviet era when it represented almost the only form of birth control, today finds itself facing increasing obstacles. Several Russian parliamentarians, supported by pronatalist rhetoric, echoed Patriarch Kirill’s demands for a ban on it in private clinics.
“There is a consensus among experts that banning abortion will not boost the birth rate. The logic is rather to artificially outline the values of the new Russian society, and to define Russians as those who – like the Moscow Patriarchate – do not support gender changes, abortion and homosexuality. continues Anne Colin Lebedev, who recalls that Vladimir Putin has several times in the past opposed calling into question the right to abortion.
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