About 100 people gathered outside the Lower House of parliament in central Moscow to protest or support legislation that, if approved, would introduce fines for propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors.
While the supporters of the initiative chose a more conventional
form of expression and demonstrated with posters calling for a
“purge” of homosexuals in Moscow and Russia, its opponents chose
a more creative tactic.
Several gay couples started kissing near the entrance of the
parliament building, demonstrating the vague line between the
visual propaganda or promotion and the expression of a persons’
feelings. The protests were a re-run of the one held in December 2012 when the
hearings on the draft law started.
Police detained about 15 people for violating public order, but
the inclination of those detained were not reported.
Initially the bill was banning the propaganda of paedophilia and
homosexuality to minors, but the formula was changed before the
second reading, apparently after strong protests from the LGBT
community, Russian activists and international rights groups who
pointed that this could be viewed as discrimination based on
sexual orientation.
The current version of the bill describes the propaganda of
non-traditional sexual relations as “spreading the information in
order to form non-traditional sexual desires in children,
describing such relations as attractive, promoting the distorted
understanding of social equality of traditional and
non-traditional relations and also unwanted solicitation of
information that could provoke interest to such relations.
One of the main sponsors of the bill, the head of the Lowed House
Committee for Family, Women and Children, Yelena Mizulina, has
elaborated in press comments that the last part concerned pop-up
ads on the Internet.
Breaking the ban means a fine. A private person can be fined from
4000 to 5000 roubles ($125 – $156) and legal entities from
800,000 to 1 million roubles for real-life propaganda, and
internet promotion is punished by 50,000 to 100,000 roubles
($1550 – $3100) fines for private persons and 1 million roubles
for legal entities with forced suspension of their activities for
up to 90 days.
Also the bill orders foreigners and people without citizenship
are expelled from Russia if found guilty of such a felony.
The international Human Rights Watch organisation has described
the proposed legislation as an attempt to make discrimination
look decent, and says Russia authorities are violating the basic
rights of representatives of LGBT community.
At the same time, the latest opinion polls shown an overwhelming
majority of Russians support the ban on promotion of
non-traditional sex. The share of supporters has grown to 88
percent from 86 percent last year. Moreover, 42 percent of those
polled say homosexuality should be made a criminal offence, and
25 percent say that it should be subject to “public
condemnation”.
This article originally appeared on: RT