RUSSIA EXPANDS BAN ON GAY FOREIGN ADOPTION

Despite being in the international spotlight during the Olympic Games, the Russian government has provocatively expanded its ban on adoption by foreign married same-sex couples, reports The Moscow Times.

In July last year, President Putin signed a law barring foreign married same-sex couples from adopting Russian orphans.

The new decree, signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and published on the government’s website on Thursday, expands this ban to also include single people who live in any of the 15 countries where gay marriage is legal.

The decree reads: “Adoptions can be carried out by members of either sex with the exception of… people in a union of two people of the same sex that has been registered as a married according to the legislation of their country… and also unmarried people in such countries.”

The government said that the ban is to avoid “possible unwanted influence such as artificial forcing of non-traditional sexual behaviour and the suffering, complexes and stresses that, according to psychologists’ studies, are often experienced by kids raised in same-sex families.”

The expansion of the homophobic law while Russia controversially hosts the Sochi Winter Olympics is a clear sign that the country has no intention of bowing to international outrage over its homophobic policies.

The ban adds to a growing list of anti-gay laws passed in Russia in recent years. A number of regions or cities in Russia have banned so called “gay propaganda” as has the federal government in law signed by Putin in June 2013.

Another bill that would allow the state to remove children from openly gay parents was introduced into the Russian parliament last year but was later withdrawn. Its champion, the deputy of the Russian State Duma Alexey Zhuravlev, said that the proposed legislation will be redrafted and reintroduced at a later stage.