var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has just signed a new decree banning all same-sex or unmarried opposite-sex couples from adopting children, and banning adoptions by foreigners if the Russian children will live in countries where same-sex marriage is legal.
The timing seems a flagrant show of homophobia during the middle of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, given all the international condemnation of Russia’s anti-gay laws.
The decree is an amendment that reiterates a law signed by Vladimir Putin last year, shortly after the Russian President signed his infamous “homosexual propaganda” law.
“The decree reiterates a ban on adoptions by same-sex couples who are in unions ‘recognized as marriages and registered in accordance with the law of a country where such marriages are permitted.’ It also bans adoptions by ‘nationals of such countries who are not married,'” the Wall Street Journal reports.
The decree may simply be red meat for the masses. As The New Civil Rights Movement reported yesterday, almost three-fourths of Russian find homosexuality “morally unacceptable.” Russian lawmakers were slated to debate this week a bill that would remove children from households where at least one parent is gay. But that legislation was postponed because of the Olympics.
There are an estimated 740,000 children in Russia waiting to be adopted, and only 18,000 Russians currently looking to adopt them.
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Image: Children in an orphanage near Kaluga, Russia. Photo by by Robert Dann