Vladimir Putin Signs Law Banning Gender Reassignment Surgery, Hormonal Therapy

In a major blow to the LGBTQUIA+ community, Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 24 signed a law that bans people from officially or medically changing their gender, The Moscow Times reported.

The bill, which was approved unanimously by both houses of parliament, bans any “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person,” as well as changing one's gender in official documents and public records. This also includes taking hormonal therapy or seeking surgery to change one's gender.

The law further bars transgender people from becoming adoptive parents and annuls marriages in which one person has changed gender. 

Such treatment will now be allowed only in the case of "congenital physiological anomalies of sex formation in children." 

The law goes into force immediately.

Lawmakers defended the law saying it aimed to protest Russia against “Western anti-family ideology”, and described gender transitioning as “pure satanism”.

Upset at the news, LGBT activists have warned that the law will lead to a further increase in already high rates of suicide and suicide attempts among transgender people, as well as encourage an underground market for surgeries and medications.

“The way how these people see their future is collapsing,” Yan Dvorkin, the head of Center-T, a group that helps transgender and non-binary people in Russia, said in an interview with The Moscow Times this month. 

Same-sex marriage was banned in Russia in 2020 and last year, Russia passed a law banning public displays and media portrayals of non-heterosexual identities. 

Earlier, a health ministry order said Russian clinics would be staffed with sexologists to help patients "overcome" homosexuality and various sexual "mental disorders", Reuters reported.