‘Curing’ Homosexuality in Russia and Ukraine

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-10/-curing-homosexuality-in-russia-and-ukraine.html

Forget gay marriage. In Russia and Ukraine, politicians are treating homosexuality like a curable addiction -- and even a crime.

Last week, acting on a widespread popular belief that sexual orientation is a matter of indoctrination, the Ukrainian parliament gave its preliminary approval to a bill that makes “propaganda of homosexuality” a criminal offense, punishable by a fine of about $10,000 or as many as five years in prison. “The spread of homosexuality is a threat to national security because it propagates the HIV/AIDS epidemic, destroys the family and could lead to a demographic crisis,” the bill's drafters wrote in an explanatory note. The danger, they reasoned, is great enough to justify a limitation on freedom of speech.

Absurd as the legislators' logic may sound, it is deadly serious. “A kid walks along Khreshchatik [Kiev's main street] and sees a same-sex couple imposing their relationship on him,” one of the bill's drafters, Communist parliamentary deputy Yevgeny Tsarkov, told the newspaper Gazeta Kyivskaya. “That cannot be allowed. Children should be protected against such information.”

The vote for the bill, which received 289 votes out of 450 with the backing of the ruling Regions Party, roughly reflected Ukrainian public opinion. A recent poll by the research firm Socis suggested that 61 percent of Kyiv residents believe that promoting homosexuality should be punishable by prison. Only 11 percent opposed any kind of punishment. The situation is similar in Russia. In a poll by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, 86 percent of respondents supported a ban on “propaganda of homosexuality” among minors.