In a major blow to the LGBTQUIA+ community, Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law banning people from undergoing gender reassignment surgery to medically change their gender. The act was passed unanimously in both houses of Parliament in Russia to ban "medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person” and barred the changing of gender in official documents, the Guardian reported. It would annul marriages in which one partner has changed their gender and does not allow transgender parents to foster or adopt children. However, medical intervention would be allowed to treat congenital anomalies -- the only exception.
Lawmakers defended the law saying it aimed to protest Russia against “Western anti-family ideology”, and described gender transitioning as “pure satanism”.
This is not the first time that the community faced such measures. The crackdown started nearly a decade ago when the government proclaimed to focus on “traditional family values”, backed by the Russian Orthodox church. The ban on gender surgeries and the curbs on the community also stems from the Kremlin's crusade to protect Russia's "traditional values".
In 2013, Russia adopted a resolution banning any public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors and in 2020, a constitutional reform made safe-sex marriage illegal last year he signed a legislatuon that banned “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” among adults.
Earlier a health ministry order said Russian clinics would be staffed with sexologists to help patients "overcome" homosexuality and various sexual "mental disorders", Reuters reported.
The order came to force on July 1 this year amid Russia's clampdown on the rights of the LGBT community.
"The help of such specialists is necessary if a person wants to recover from frigidity, impotence, or such violations of sexual behaviour as fetishism, masochism and sadism," the official newspaper of Russia's parliament said, as quoted by Reuters.