The proposed bill would have also constitutionally banned same-sex marriages and adoption.
The Russian cabinet has surprisingly acted in a pro-LGBTQ+ way after it struck down amendments to the country’s new ‘Family Code’.
The controversial amendments would’ve prevented trans people from legally changing their gender, as well as constitutional bans on same-sex marriages and adoption.
In documents seen by TASS from the Russian cabinet, the amendments were rejected by the government commission on legislative activities.
The draft says: “If the law is adopted, the balance of rights and interests in the family may be shifted towards the rights of parents, given the deliberately weaker position of children in family relations, taking into account their age.
“These initiatives do not correspond to the interests of the child and the protection of his rights.”
The draft also called the proposed amendments “vague” and that it failed to “provide arguments indicating the need for a serious change in both the conceptual apparatus and the structure of the family legislation in general.”
When the amendments were proposed by Yelena Mizulina, a Russian lawmaker who spearheaded the country’s gay ‘propaganda’ rule, trans people began fleeing the country. Irma Veller, a 44-year-old trans woman, told The Moscow Times: “I understood that my life is of no value here anymore.”
Russia has some of the, if not the, worst LGBTQ+ rights in the developed world. A study from earlier this year found that nearly one in five Russians advocated for “eliminating” the LGBTQ+ community from society, and nearly a third of Russians advocated for isolating the LGBTQ+ community from society.
Elsewhere, in self-governed Russian state Chechnya, gay people have been rounded up and held in modern-day concentration camps, with many of them tortured for information and some even beaten to death.
And earlier this year, a gay Russian influencer, Ali Zabirov, who went by the name of Egor Gromov, was found murdered in a friend’s house. Egor’s body showed signs of a violent death, including bruising around his neck, indicating that he’d been strangled.
Also worryingly, violent anti-LGBTQ+ activists in Russia, linked to a SAW-themed website which promoted anti-LGBTQ+ violence, are planning to spread across Europe. In an email sent to Svetlana Zakharova, the group set out plans to expand to Warsaw, Ostrava, Berlin, Kharkov and Arnhem.
Part of the email said: “The main activity of the organisation will be the regulation of LGBT activism in Europe.”
Related: Russia ordered to compensate LGBTQ+ activists who were unlawfully arrested at protest
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