Russia Today are reporting that the the lower house of the Russian Parliament, The Duma, has voted for a ban on promoting non-traditional sexual relations to minors. Now whilst this might sound sensible, it is one of those ideas that in practice causes a lot more problems than it solves.
The situation in Russia regarding LGBT relations has been pretty stable since 2003. The age of consent is 16, for both heterosexual and LGBT relationships, homosexual sex is legal, as is the right to change your gender, but there is still a long way to go.
There are no anti-discrimination laws in place for the Russian LGBT community, and this new law seeks to take the issue further back into the dark ages. People start to express their sexuality as early as their early teens, and they will want to find out information. Blocking access to that information will not promote heterosexuality, but will make LGBT relationships, and other non-traditional sexual relations more interesting. It's classic reverse psychology, tell somebody they can't do something and they want to do it all the more.
Some ideas sound eminently sensible. However, most of those ideas end up causing more problems, especially when those measures are directly against a person's sexuality, and also, trying to place societal controls on something that Mother Nature decides. It comes across as being a fool's errand to try and place societal controls, such as laws, on things that are not decided by societies, but by nature.
What's worse is that the public backs this ban. 88% back it, and 42% think homosexuality should be made a criminal offence. This is a backward step for Russia, and it will come back and bite them, when they least expect it.
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