St. Petersburg deputies approve bill banning pedophilia and gay propaganda (Video).

The St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly on Wednesday accepted a bill banning “propaganda” of pedophilia and of homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgender (LGBT) concerns among minors, Fontanka.ru reported. The bill, having passed in its third reading, institutes fines for violators ranging from up to 5,000 rubles ($170) for individuals, to up to 500,000 rubles for organizations and corporations, and now goes to Governor Georgy Poltavchenko for his signature.
The roll-call vote showed 29 votes in favor, five against and one abstention: Grigory Yavlinsky, the only deputy from the Yabloko party not to vote against the legislation.
Vedomosti cited the law as reading, “Public acts intended as propaganda for homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality and transgenderism among minors, are taken to include the uncontrolled spread of information that poses a danger to the health and the moral and spiritual development of minors, creating for them a distorted representation of the social equivalence of traditional and nontraditional relationships.”
Defining propaganda for pedophilia, the law describes public acts whose goals include creating “a distorted representation of the compliance to social norms of intimate relationships between adults and minors.”
LGBT activists in Russia and abroad have opposed the law, staging several demonstrations in St. Petersburg as it has been under consideration over the past few months.
Valentina Matviyenko, former governor of St. Petersburg and the current speaker of the Federation Council, has voiced her support for passage of a similar bill at the federal level. Laws are already in effect in the Arkhangelsk and Ryazan regions, and the Kostroma regional assembly is about to present one for a third reading, the web site of the gay rights organization Gay Russia reported.
Support for these initiatives has also come from the Russian Orthodox Church. At a four-hour public hearing in St. Petersburg last Friday appeared an adviser to the State Duma’s committee for family, women and children’s issues, the monk Dmitry. Dmitry said that passage of the law would save representatives of sexual minorities from violent attacks, especially from relatives of minors who had been affected by gay “propaganda,” Vedomosti reported. If these individuals do not plan “to approach minors with propaganda of homosexuality,” he said, then the adoption of anti-propaganda laws should not worry them.
According to Dmitry, representatives of sexual minority communities need to understand that “the freedom to swing one’s arms ends where another’s face begins.”
Critics of the law also spoke at the hearing. Igor Kochetkov, from the LGBT organization Vykhod (Exit), was interrupted at the microphone with cries of, “Tell us the result of your trial for pedophilia,” and, “You are not people,” a sentiment Dmitry emphasized he did not agree with, Fontanka.ru reported.
Lev Shcheglov, a longtime doctor and sex pathologist, criticized the juxtaposition of pedophilia and homosexuality.
“The law may be correct from a legal standpoint,” he said, “but it is not correct from a social standpoint. Next, we could institute penalties for robbery and vegetarianism. We must not mix the criminal and the non-criminal. Up to 90 percent of homosexuals are born, not made.”