Yesterday, the State Duma held a high-profile meeting about the new anti-LGBT bills. Leaving aside the accusations of sodomy by Peppa Piggy’s friends, attempts to “justify Nabokov” and the constant refrain of Satanism, the situation is extremely worrying. The deputies and invited experts considered two sets of documents. One - initiated by Nina Ostanina (KPRF), chairwoman of the Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs, and joined by deputies from the KPRF, Just Russia and LDPR, hangs (https://sozd.duma.gov.ru/bill/165975-8) in the public domain on the Duma’s website. The second, better known, presented by the United Russia deputy Alexander Khinstein, has already been discussed on social networks; it is not posted on official platforms and is published (https://t.me/Hinshtein/2737) on Khinstein’s Telegram-channel. Both affect the laws on the media, information, information technology and information protection, and state support for cinema, but Khinstein also included amendments to the law on protecting children from harmful information and the law on advertising, and proposed expanding the famous 2013 Article 6.21 of the CAO (propaganda of non-traditional relationships among minors) and increasing fines. Following the meeting, Vyacheslav Volodin instructed an inter-faction working group, to be headed by another ardent fighter for traditional family values, Peter Tolstoy, to merge the two packages of documents. In a morning post (https://t.me/vv_volodin/559) on his channel, Volodin promised to protect Russian citizens from degradation and extinction, and so the new merged version of the bill will be considered as soon as next Thursday and probably signed into law in November. So what do the amendments to these laws threaten? 📌 First and foremost: the law will “protect” not just children and teenagers, but everyone, regardless of age: 📌 In addition to “propaganda”, “demonstration” has been added (a ban is placed on “description, depiction of non-traditional sexual relationships and/or preferences”) - so far only to minors, but as we can see, the age limits are easily widened. This means that any representation in media and culture of anything other than staples will be punishable by fines and, if the experts’ demands are met, criminal prosecution; 📌 Word juggling and word usage is one of the effective tools of the current war. Many of the speakers suggested using “clear, familiar concepts” - “sex” and “sodomy”. “Sodomy“instead of the alien words”gender“,”LGBT“. Obviously, the nostalgia for the Soviet criminal article 121”on sodomy“is now more acute than ever; 📌Pedophilia and”non-traditional relationships“go together - it is one package.”Extremism“,”undermining constitutional norms“and demands to prosecute for LGBT symbols were often mentioned in the discussion, clearly outlining the prospects of further steps by the authorities in this direction; 📌 During the discussion of the bill, militaristic rhetoric was heard: LGBT propaganda was described as the core of a hybrid spiritual war declared to Russia by the”collective West“. According to MP and owner of the Tsargrad channel Konstantin Malofeev, it is here, in the denial of traditional family values, that the forefront of this war, the front line. Moreover, the failures at the front in Ukraine have been linked to the decline of morality; defeating “sodomy” will also lead to victory in the war; 📌 Volodin’s aggressive outbursts, using harsher language than the authors of the bills themselves, Putin’s constant reference to”certain genders“and”parents number 1 and 2" suggests that the laws are likely to pass as soon as possible and will be used for a witch-hunt of showdowns with the “agents of hybrid war” waged by LGBT families, book publishers and filmmakers. We do not want to spread panic, but we believe the situation is dangerous. We advise to assess the risks and take the adopted amendments with the utmost seriousness. The likelihood of harassment affecting as wide a range of people as possible is quite high.

FAS

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