On November 17, the Russian Ministry of Justice announced that it had petitioned the Supreme Court to consider the Gay “international people action” to be extremist and abolish it, directly endangering activists and any social or physical expressions that might be seen as defending LGBTQ rights.
The government claimed in a speech that the “movement,” which it did not specifically identify or associate with particular organizations, exhibits “various signs and manifestations of fundamentalist orientation, including provocation of social and religious anger.”
The action will remain heard on November 30. Similar restrictions have been placed on other groups in the past, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017 and those connected to the imprisoned criticism lawmaker Aleksei Navalny. If the charter regarding the Gay movement get approved, jail sentences are feared as an impending punishment for breaches.
The Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church have praised Russia for upholding” standard values” while accusing the West of encouraging sexuality.
Transgender members of Russia’s social community have responded to the news with worry and outrage. Pyotr Voskresensky, a physician from St. Petersburg who founded Russia’s first gay exhibition just before President Vladimir Putin signed legislation in December 2022 broadening the ban on “LGBTQ propaganda,” is now an exiled political figure in Germany.
After the 2022 law was passed, Yulia Tsvetkova, an actor from Russia’s Far East, left the nation. Authorities have been pursuing her since 2019 on “pornography” and “gay advertising” costs for her social media posts of body-positive female images. After a protracted legal battle, Tsvetkova was found not guilty last month. However, the decision was overturned this time, and in October, she wrote in an online article on her Telegram cultural advertising channel that an additional warrant had been issued for her arrest.
Tsvetkova described an attempt to leave Russia after her situation was opened in a blog on November 20. She described how LGBTQ organizations that were assisting her had been too careless in their approach—for instance, brushing off safety concerns—and how, within days, FSB state security forces had detained her. She now claims that by not positively protesting the anti-LGBT extremism measures before they go into effect and instead choosing to do so after the fact, such organizations are making a mistake. She says,” If the rule about extremism is adopted, it’s actually scary.”
She claims that the evidence of what is to appear are gloomy. Many citizens of the nation have already had their livelihoods destroyed by these rules. And it’s a depressing pattern. She claims that some organizations are hesitant or afraid to lend a hand.
The drive for the new charter comes at a time when Russia’s anti-LGBT policies have been escalating in brutality; this trend can be traced back to 2013, when the state passed an earlier laws outlawing “gay propaganda.” It has been claimed that the government of Chechen bodybuilder Ramzan Kadyrov in Russia’s Northern Caucasus encouraged the misuse and murder of lesbian and bisexual men. Putin enacted a moratorium on gender transition into legislation earlier this year.
Commentators claim that the St. Petersburg designer Sasha Skochilenko received a seven-year prison sentence last week that was particularly tough because of her sexual orientation.
Putin stated that” sexual minorities, trans people” should support social representation because their narratives are “also part of society,” but he also referred to them disparagingly as” transformers” when referring to their orientation at the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum on November 17.
Voskresensky, who organized a gay tour of the Hermitage, noted in an earlier Facebook post that Putin had shown similar two-edged public support for Jehovah’s Witnesses just before they were declared illegal.
Yet government-run organizations are suffering as a result of the assault on LGBTQ areas. In light of the fact that state-run cultural and educational organizations have grown wary of using rainbows symbols as a result of overly careful dissidents, Vladimir Davankov, evil speech of Russia’s lower house of parliament, requested last week that Roskomnadzor, the media regulator, formally declare that” the rainbows has nothing to do with LGBT.” However, the few NGOs still involved in Gay and women’s rights are rushing to get rid of rainbow logos to evade punishment.
