Russian parliament advances bill to ban adoptions by gender-transition countries

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia’s lower house of parliament on Tuesday passed final reading of a bill to ban adoption of Russian children by citizens of countries where gender transitioning is legal.

The measure, which now goes to the upper house of parliament and then to President Vladimir Putin for signing into law, follows an array of measures in recent years suppressing non-traditional sexuality.

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, who authored the bill, said on the Telegram messaging app that “it is extremely important to eliminate possible dangers in the form of gender reassignment that adopted children may face in these countries.”

He listed at least 15 countries that the law would apply to, most of them in Europe but including Australia, Argentina and Canada. Adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens was banned in 2012.

Putin and other top officials in recent years have increasingly called for observing so-called “traditional values” as a counter to Western liberalism characterized as degenerate.

Russia last year banned medical procedures to change gender aimed at changing gender and its Supreme Court declared the LGBTQ+ “movement” to be extremist.

In 2022, Putin signed a law prohibiting the distribution of LGBTQ+ information to people of all ages, expanding a ban issued in 2013 on disseminating the material to minors.

The parliament is also considering a measure that would criminalize “propaganda” that discourages people from having children.