Russian Parliament Proposes Law That Would Deny LGBT Parents Custody Over Children

A member of the Russian parliament is proposing a law that would deny gay and lesbian parents custody of their own children. MP Alexei Zhuravlev of the United Russia party has submitted a bill stipulating that a parent's "nontraditional sexual orientation" be considered grounds for depriving a parent of its rights. The draft bill, published on the parliament's website on Thursday, also includes alcoholism, drug use, and abuse as a reason to deprive an individual of their parental rights.

"Following the letter of the law that forbids propaganda of non-traditional sex to minors we must restrict such propaganda not only in mass media but also the family," Zhuravlev wrote. His reasoning is that "if one of the child's parents indulges in sexual contact with persons of the same sex, the damage to the child's psyche is immense as a mother or father serves as an example for their offspring."

In the documents attached to the bill, Zhuravlev referred not to personal monitoring, but to research conducted by Mark Regnerus, an associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin. Regnerus claims that the children of people who have homosexual relations are less likely to call themselves 'fully straight' than the children of heterosexual parents (60-70 percent against 90 percent).

In addition, Regnerus claims that children of homosexual parents demonstrated three times the incidences of VD (25 percent against 8 percent), five times greater suicidal tendencies (25 percent against 5 percent) and three times the level of "inability to remain faithful to partners" (40 percent against 13 percent).

This proposal comes in the wake of a bill banning homosexual "propaganda" among minors. Authors of the bill have justified it as a measure aimed at protecting children, and not suppressing the LGBT community. These laws are creating an atmosphere where hate crimes are becoming patriotic. A PSA reported a few days ago is encouraging Russians to report their neighbors if they suspect they may be gay.

Prominent Russian gay rights activist Nikolay Alekseyev told the press that he could not believe that the lower house could approve the bill or that it could be signed by the Russian president.

Homosexuality was decriminalized after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, but many Russians still view it as either an affliction that requires medical treatment or a crime deserving of prosecution. Russian president Vladimir Putin said this week that Russia's love for composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, who was homosexual, was proof that the country appreciated its gay population. But gay activists say they are being turned into scapegoats for problems including low birth rates and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is closely tied to drug use.

The chairman of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Mikhail Fedotov, said the fresh bill was a disaster and an attempt to gain popularity through inflating the unimportant yet controversial problems.

"Maybe we should also take driving licenses from all left-handed people? They are left-handed and the cars have steering wheels on the left, it must be harder for them to drive," Fedotov told reporters. "It is a disaster when an issue that is on the 30th place by its importance is elevated to the top of social mind and inflated to the size of a global cataclysm because afterwards we don't know what to do with it," the rights activist said.

It's still not clear if Zhuravlev's proposal has a strong chance of becoming law, but it follows other legislation signed by Putin that rights activists and Western governments say are discriminatory against homosexuals.