Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law on Monday legislation banning gender reassignment both as a medical procedure and in official identity documents.
The law, passed unanimously by the Russian parliament, is intended to “prevent the degeneration of Russian children and adults” but is alarming the LGBT community. It will ban all medical procedures, both surgical and medicinal, for gender reassignment in Russia.
Only medical interventions to treat congenital abnormalities, including genetic and endocrine disorders associated with incorrect genital formation in children, will be allowed, following the decision of an expert committee.
The new law also bans child adoptions for people who have undergone sex reassignment surgery and cancels marriages if one of the spouses has had such an operation. Russia’s 2020 constitutional reform established the concept of marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman.
Russian deputy health minister, Oleg Salagai, announced in June last year that there were 996 applications for sex reassignment in Russia at the time. Between 2018 and last year, more than 2,700 Russians had their gender changed in documents. Russian transgender people now fear more and more “repression,” and many of them see leaving Russia as their only solution, reports Spanish news agency EFE.
“As the first transgender politician in Russia, I can say that this law is not only discriminatory, but it prohibits the very existence of trans people in Russia. It is a genocide against transsexuals,” Yulia Alyoshina, who is running for governor of the Siberian region of Altai, said in a statement to EFE.
Meanwhile, Maksim, a transgender man who works with the T Center, the main non-governmental organization supporting transgender people in Russia, says he has made “plans to emigrate to Spain” because he believes “Russia is degrading” quickly.
