MOSCOW — In an industrial block in northeastern Moscow on a recent Friday night, organizers of an L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly art festival were assiduously checking IDs. No one under 18 allowed. They were trying to comply with a 2013 Russian law that bans exposing minors to anything that could be considered “gay propaganda.”
The organizers had good reason to be wary: Life has been challenging for gay Russians since the law passed, as the government has treated gay life as a Western import that is harmful to traditional Russian values and society.
Now Russia’s Parliament is set to pass a legislative package that would ban all “gay propaganda,” signaling an even more difficult period ahead for a stigmatized segment of society.
The laws would prohibit representation of L.G.B.T.Q. relationships in any media — streaming services, social platforms, books, music, posters, billboards and films — and, activists fear, in any public space as well.
The proposed laws are part of an intensifying effort by President Vladimir V. Putin to cast Russia as fighting a civilizational struggle against the West, which he accuses of trying to export corrosive values.
The Kremlin is coupling the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. expression with its rationale for the war in Ukraine, insisting that Russia is fighting not just Ukraine but all of NATO, a Western alliance that represents a threat to the motherland.
Mr. Putin drove home that argument in a speech last week, saying that the West can have “dozens of genders and gay pride parades,” but that it should not try to spread these “trends” elsewhere.
Aleksandr Khinstein, a deputy from the ruling United Russia party and the lead author of the new anti-gay bills, was even more blunt. “A special military operation is taking place not only on the battlefields,” he said, using the approved Kremlin euphemism for the war, “but also in the consciousness of the people, in their minds and in their souls. Today, we are fighting so that in Russia instead of mom and dad there isn’t ‘parent No. 1,’ ‘parent No. 2,’ ‘parent No. 3.’”
Kremlin critics see the proposals as an attempt to create an internal enemy to divert attention from battlefield setbacks and an unpopular draft of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
“It’s the equivalent of saying, ‘Look, we have this special operation. If we lose, your kids will have their gender changed, they’ll take your kids away, it’ll be the stuff of nightmares,’” said Dr. Nikolai Lunchenkov, a physician who focuses on L.G.B.T.Q. health.
The proposed laws have prompted some L.G.B.T.Q. Russians to doubt that they can continue living in an environment that is increasingly hostile to anyone who challenge the Kremlin’s line, whether on the war or on queer lives.
The 2013 law was promoted as protecting children, while the new ones “seek to prohibit gay propaganda as a danger to the state system,” defining it as extremism, he said.
The second times piece looks at what has happened in Florida which will likely lead to more LGBT suicides and an even more difficult lifefor the transgender who DeSantis is seeking stigmatize all under the false flag of "protecting children." Here are highlights:
Florida has effectively banned medications and surgery for new adolescent patients seeking gender transitions after an unprecedented vote by the state’s medical board.
The move makes Florida one of several states to restrict what’s known as gender-affirming care for adolescents, but the first to do so through the actions of its Board of Medicine, whose 14 members were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The strategy circumvented the Republican-controlled State Legislature, which had twice declined to take up a bill aiming to restrict such treatment.
The board voted 6-3 (with five others not present) on Friday to adopt a new standard of care that forbids doctors to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones, or perform surgeries, until transgender patients are 18.
The Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine also voted to restrict care for new patients on Friday, but allowed an exception for children enrolled in clinical studies. Doctors who flout the rules risk losing their medical licenses.
And it comes four days before the conclusion of the governor’s race in the state and as conservatives have adopted gender-related medical care for adolescents as a key issue on the national political stage.
Before the medical board decided to craft the new standard, members received personal calls from the state’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo [a certifiable nutcase appointed by DeSantis], urging them to do so.
Earlier this year, Florida became one of at least nine states to bar Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care, affecting thousands of low-income adults and children.
Such treatments for adolescents typically include puberty blockers, which stall development, often followed by testosterone or estrogen to bring about secondary sex characteristics that better align transgender adolescents’ bodies with their experience of gender. . . . . All treatments require parental consent and approval from physicians.
Major medical groups in the United States, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have condemned state bans and insurance restrictions of such care as dangerous political intrusions into standard medical practice.
I am very fearful for the future - especially if Republians gain control of Congress. It may soon be time to emigrate.
No comments:
Post a Comment