Week-ending 17 July 2020
On Tuesday 14 July seven senators submitted a draft bill to amend the Family Code and legally ban gay marriage and adoptions, including, according to its authors, by transgender people. The move is intened to bring Russian legislation into line with the new constitutional amendments that include a provision defining marriage as a ‘union between a man and a woman.’
Sources:
Russia Moves to Ban Gay Marriage
Russian lawmakers have swiftly moved to ban same-sex marriage in line with President Vladimir Putin’s recent changes to the Constitution.
Seven senators submitted a draft bill late Tuesday to amend Russia’s Family Code and legally ban gay marriage and adoptions, including, according to its authors, by transgender people. The move comes two weeks after voters overwhelmingly approved a set of constitutional amendments that include a provision defining marriage as a “union between a man and a woman.
“The bill ends the practice of marriage between persons of the same sex, including those who changed genders,” its co-author, senator Yelena Mizulina, told Interfax. […]
The Moscow Times, 15 July 2020
Transgender rights
On Friday, 17 July, the board of the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum issued a statement expressing deep concern about proposed amendments to the Russian Family Code and Law No. 143-FZ “On Civil Status Acts” that ‘would result in a drastic worsening of transgender persons’ life conditions and undue restriction of their rights.’ The statement said that ‘The new bill would prevent persons who have changed their gender from amending the sex designation on their birth certificate and thus will have an enormously negative impact on the lives of thousands of people in Russia and will aggravate the discrimination already suffered by this vulnerable group. If adopted, this bill will effectively deny a large part of Russian citizens the right to marry and start a family. Moreover, the bill provides that new birth certificates already issued to transgender persons must be withdrawn and the old ones reissued, which would invalidate their existing marriages and destroy families, because the state does not recognise same-sex marriages. This totally unfounded legislative proposal targets the most vulnerable group of Russians, limiting their access to basic human rights.’
