The State Duma adopted in the first reading amendments banning gender marker changes and operations related to transgender transition

Deputies passed in the first reading a bill banning transgender transition. The meeting is broadcast on the website of the lower house of parliament.

All 365 deputies voted for the bill.

During the consideration of the bill, co-author of the bill Pyotr Tolstoy said: “So this diagnosis, which respected doctors tell us about, which sounds like “transsexualism,” refers to gender identity disorders. Among other things, [it is] the basis for declaring a citizen unfit for military service. We must not forget that by changing the gender of one of the partners, a homosexual couple receives the right to adopt a child. Unfortunately, such cases already exist in Russia.

According to the Russian Constitution, marriage is a union between a man and a woman, and there are simply no undefined, intermediate, additional genders there. There is no parent-1 and parent-2."

The amendments will make it impossible to “state registration of gender change without surgery,” that is, changing the gender marker in documents, and “medical interventions” related to transgender transition.

Activists interviewed by Mediazona noted that these formulations, in addition to operations, also include gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy.

Such operations were allowed only in cases “related to the treatment of congenital physiological anomalies of sex formation in children” after the decision of the state medical commission.

The bill, whose authors include almost 370 deputies, was introduced at the end of May. Deputy Speaker Pyotr Tolstoy said that with this initiative, parliamentarians “preserve for posterity Russia with its cultural and family values, traditional foundations, putting a barrier to the penetration of Western anti-family ideology.”

Earlier, Mediazona noticed that in Russia, against the backdrop of mobilization and new laws against LGBTQ+ people, they began to renew passports more often due to a change in gender marker. In 2022, the department issued almost twice as many new passports issued in connection with a change in gender marker.