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On Thursday, two bills were submitted to the State Duma to ban propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations. They were signed by 388 deputies, including speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, his deputies and leaders of all factions. Lawyers believe that law enforcers will now have to find out by trial and error what “non-traditional relationships” are, and LGBT activists fear increased pressure from the state.
The first bill amends five laws: “On information, information technologies and information protection”, “On the media”, “On the protection of children from information harmful to their health and development”, “On advertising” and “On state support for cinematography”. “. The list of already prohibited information (propaganda of war, the cult of violence and cruelty, inciting hatred and enmity, public calls for terrorism and extremism, etc.) is proposed to include “materials promoting non-traditional sexual relations and (or) preferences.” At the same time, not only “propaganda”, but also “demonstration” of such relations will be banned in advertising. The same “demonstration”, together with information “that can make children want to change their sex”, will add to the list of content harmful to children: it will be possible to distribute it on television and radio only in coded form and subject to the confirmation of the user’s age.
The second bill deals with responsibility for violating the new prohibitions. The current art. 6.21 The Code of Administrative Offenses will now penalize propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among persons of any age, and propaganda among minors will become an aggravating circumstance. At the same time, fines will also increase: for citizens they will range from 50,000 to 400,000 rubles. (now – from 4 thousand to 100 thousand rubles), for officials – up to 800 thousand, and for legal entities – up to 5 million rubles. (the maximum fine threatens for propaganda in the media and the Internet).
Citizens will pay from 50,000 to 200,000 rubles for the dissemination of information among minors that demonstrates non-traditional sexual relations or that can make them want to change their sex (new article 6.21.2), citizens will pay from 50 thousand to 200 thousand rubles, a legal entity – up to 4 million rubles. And the maximum fines are proposed for promoting pedophilia (Article 6.21.1): for citizens – from 200 thousand to 800 thousand rubles, for legal entities – up to 10 million rubles. Foreigners for all these offenses will also be expelled from Russia.
“Public approval and the formation of the attractiveness of non-traditional sexual relations is dangerous not only for children and young people who are not yet able to think critically, but for the whole society as a whole, since it threatens the demographic growth and economic development of the country,” the explanatory note says. “Our initiative is not an act of censorship. We do not prohibit the mention of LGBT people as a phenomenon. It is propaganda that we ban,” assured journalists the initiator of the amendments, the head of the committee on information policy, Alexander Khinshtein (ER). He noted that the propaganda is aimed at creating an attractive image and “a distorted idea of the social equivalence of traditional and non-traditional sexual relations.”
The amendments were prepared in the information policy committee and were finalized following the October 17 parliamentary hearings. In particular, the authors took into account the norms of the bill introduced in July by a group of oppositionists headed by Nina Ostanina (KPRF), chairman of the family committee, for example, on a ban on issuing cinema licenses for films containing “non-traditional propaganda”. But the item on the inclusion of “denial of family values” in the list of prohibited information was not included in the draft. As Nina Ostanina told Kommersant, some ideas of their document can still be formalized in the form of amendments for the second reading. Also at this stage, according to her, will be discussed and proposals for amendments to the Criminal Code. In the first reading, both drafts can be considered as early as October 27.
Maria Latsinskaya, a journalist and host of the Lesbian Lobby Telegram channel, notes that few people have been prosecuted under the current article on the ban on LGBT propaganda among minors, but the new bill will give the state additional leverage to put pressure on opposition-minded LGBT activists: “The draft is so vague it is painted that even a hetero-human who is at least a little bit different from the majority in his sexual preferences can fall under it. There will be more discrimination in work, in education, and most importantly, the homophobic majority will once again get the right to hate.”
According to lawyer Aleksey Elaev, the main problem with the application of the new articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses will be that their wording is very different from the wording in Chapter 18 of the Criminal Code (crimes against sexual integrity and sexual freedom of the individual), which took decades of law enforcement to separate from each other. . “Law enforcement will have to figure out by trial and error what “non-traditional relationships” are, how exactly to define other terms and how to prove the possible occurrence of a particular desire. This will require the development of new tools for conducting forensic examinations, as well as the implementation of proceedings on these offenses. Therefore, it is necessary to “preemptively” adopt the basic resolution of the plenum of the Supreme Court with an explanation of both the methods of proof and the delimitation of the compositions under the new articles of the Code of Administrative Offenses,” Mr. Elaev believes.
The bill contains rather vague wording, which means that almost anyone who speaks on this topic will be targeted, lawyer Sergei Chugunov believes. In practice, he notes, such cases are resolved with the help of experts, who always find signs of an offense. Mr. Chugunov recalls that in 2014 the Constitutional Court found restrictions on the promotion of non-traditional relationships justified, citing the need to protect the especially fragile minds of minors. But today’s novels go beyond those approved by the Constitutional Court, and due to new bans, even specialists – teachers, doctors or psychologists – will not be able to communicate with minors on this topic, the expert warns.
Given the broad interpretation, films, podcasts, songs, and video content that mention LGBT people may become inaccessible to users in Russia, and social networks, under the threat of fines, will be required to block references to LGBT people, predicts court lawyer Maxim Olenichev (included in the register of foreign media agents). “In essence, the bills prohibit any dissemination of information about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism. Their implementation may displace any mention of LGBT people from public space. But these people will live in Russia, communicate, and solve emerging problems. And in such a situation, prejudices against LGBT people will inevitably spread, which will lead to their stigmatization and discrimination,” the expert sums up.
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