In his Dec 12 state-of-the-nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin portrayed his country as a defender of traditional values, saying calls for tolerance equates “good and evil,” The Guardian reports.
According to the report, Putin referred to the West’s “so-called tolerance” as “genderless and fruitless.” The Huffington Post says the president also expressed concern over the “review” of morality norms taking place in various countries.
Putin has faced a barrage of global criticism since signing off on a federal law banning the promotion of “nontraditional sexual relations” among minors in June. Even as he has issued statements saying that there’s no discrimination against LGBT Russians and that all are welcome regardless of sexual orientation at the Sochi Winter Games in February, Putin has maintained that his country’s anti-gay laws are necessary to address Russia’s demographic challenges.
“The people who initiated the enactment of this bill acted on the premise that the same-sex marriages cannot produce children,” Putin explained in September. “Meanwhile, Russia is experiencing certain demographic problems, and we’re interested to have more traditional families and more children.”
He has also said that even as European nations legalize gay marriage, Europeans are “dying out” and same-sex marriages “don’t produce children.”
In November, a group called the World Congress of Families, which held a discussion entitled Family Policy Lessons from Other Lands: What Should America Learn? at the US Capitol, says the US can take a lesson from countries like Russia and Australia about “rebuilding a pro-family policy.”
The World Congress of Families, the National Organization for Marriage, and Focus on the Family have held meetings with Russian anti-gay activists ahead of a summit of “traditional family” supporters in Moscow next year.
At a recent conference in Kingston, Jamaica, anti-gay groups from the US and the UK urged Jamaicans to fight off calls for the repeal of its buggery law.
While Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth About Homsexuality, told attendees not to follow in the footsteps of the US and Britain by permitting LGBT activists to “achieve dominance” in their society, Andrea Minichiello Williams, of the UK’s Christian Concern, suggested that Jamaica could lead the way in rejecting pressure to decriminalize gay sex, BuzzFeed reports.
Why you can trust Xtra
