Do You Think That This Is What They Dream Of Here?

I wouldn’t doubt that the Republicans dream of passing laws like these.

Russia’s Duma votes for law to ban gender reassignment surgery, in further crackdown on LGBTQ rights

CNN

By Anna Chernova and Uliana Pavlova

July 14, 2023

The Russian State Duma, or lower house of parliament, has voted in favor of a new law banning nearly all medical help for transgender people including gender reassignment surgery, in a raft of new anti-LGBTQ laws in Russia.

The bill, which had its third and final reading on Friday, prohibits doctors from conducting gender reassignment surgeries, except in cases related to treating congenital physiological anomalies in children. It also restricts registry offices from amending official documents based on medical certificates of gender change.

The law must still be approved by the Federation Council and signed by President Vladimir Putin before it comes into force.

Amendments made for its third reading include disqualifying individuals who have undergone gender changes from becoming adoptive parents or guardians, as well as the possibility of annulling a marriage if one or both spouses undergo a gender change and update their civil status records.

Putin has toughened anti-LGTBQ legislation in recent months, as the Kremlin clamps down on free speech and human rights amid the war in Ukraine.

I bet you that the Republicans and the right-wing Alliance Defending Freedom have their heads together trying to think how to pass a law here like that one.

Vanya Solovey, a trans rights campaigner, said “it is no coincidence” that the law is being read in Russian parliament amid Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

“Russia’s anti-gender discourse and politics have intensified since it started the full-scale war. For months, Putin and other officials have been increasingly targeting trans people in their statements,” Solovey, an advocacy and program officer for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the trans rights group Transgender Europe, told CNN.

“This anti-trans politics is indeed a politics of terror. It affects not only trans people but everyone living in Russia.”

Just like the Republicans are using us as a distraction for their desire to cut Social Security, Medicare, TANF, WIC, and other social programs and cutting the taxes of their billionaire friends.

Truthout wrote,

“The way how these people see their future is collapsing. We are getting a lot of suicidal messages,” Yan Dvorkin, the head of Center-T, a group that helps transgender and non-binary people in Russia, told The Moscow Times.

In 2022, Russia ranked 46th out of 49 European countries by Rainbow Europe’s annual LGBT rights rankings. Since 2013, Russia has enacted multiple anti-LGBTQ laws that restrict the promotion of so-called “LGBT propaganda.” These laws have effectively outlawed the public life of LGBTQ Russians, as well as books, films and online spaces that “promote” homosexuality. Because of these laws, Russian LGBTQ activists have faced state repression and arrests.

And even more alarmingly they write…

In another concerning move, Vladimir Putin recently instructed Russia’s Health Ministry to study the “social behavior” of LGBT People, raising alarms in Russia’s LGBTQ community that Russian authorities could start conducting mass “conversion therapy” on its LGBTQ citizens in the near future. The UN has called for a global ban of the practice, stating that conversion therapy causes suffering and long-term psychological harm, and can amount to torture.

“We knew that they didn’t like us here, but to go absolutely against human rights, against the existing laws even,” Maxim, a 29-year-old transgender Russian activist, told Associated Press.

Mark my words, the Republicans want to do that here! In some states here they are looking to call healthcare for us “conversion therapy” and are looking for ways to ban healthcare for us totally.

Human Rights Watch has stated that Russia’s crackdown on LGBTQ lives is a way to distract from the country’s military losses in the Ukraine and “to consolidate conservative support at home and position Russia as the defender of ‘traditional values,’ in opposition to ‘the west.’”

Hmm… does that sound familiar?

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” in this case, the Iron Curtain.