Russia Bans Discussing gay People to Children

[Anxious Girl]

Here's the link: http://now.msn.com/russia-homosexual-pr ... parliament. According to the Russian government, using gay propaganda to children is forbidden, but they don't know what's considered as gay propaganda. Suddenly anti-gay Christians and fundie Christians who see Russia as a communist country agree with them even though they're against communism and want America to "catch up" with Russia. Apparantly people in the comments section view their version Christian theocratic agenda disguised with anti-anything that they think Christians should find immoral words as a better government for everyone and will bring up the economy. What a joke.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Seriously?

A child asking "Mommy, why are those two men holding hands?" or "Daddy, what does gay mean?" is not going to lead to any explanations of how sex between gay people happens, any more than seeing two straight people leads to kids asking how sex happens.

If a child is too young to know what sex is, they probably dont know that it even happens-all they know about marriage is that people get married because they love eachother, and its so easy to explain that sometimes instead of a man and woman loving eachother, some men love men and some women love women, and that is called being gay.

If a child is old enough to know about sex, there is no reason why they shouldnt be given the right answers if they ask.

It wont turn children gay, because being gay isnt a choice, its something theyre born with. Any child who does hear about gay people and then comes out as gay likely already had feelings towards someone of the same sex, but didnt realise there was a name for it or that other people did too.

[Val78]

Ya, straight sex will sound as gross as gay sex to a 7 year old...may just turn the kid asexual

for life;)

[treemom]

It is just like Tennessee! (although that was only in schools)

[JesusFightClub]

Seriously?

A child asking "Mommy, why are those two men holding hands?" or "Daddy, what does gay mean?" is not going to lead to any explanations of how sex between gay people happens, any more than seeing two straight people leads to kids asking how sex happens.

If a child is too young to know what sex is, they probably dont know that it even happens-all they know about marriage is that people get married because they love eachother, and its so easy to explain that sometimes instead of a man and woman loving eachother, some men love men and some women love women, and that is called being gay.

If a child is old enough to know about sex, there is no reason why they shouldnt be given the right answers if they ask.

It wont turn children gay, because being gay isnt a choice, its something theyre born with. Any child who does hear about gay people and then comes out as gay likely already had feelings towards someone of the same sex, but didnt realise there was a name for it or that other people did too.

Why, this. The voice of sense.

Small and Smaller's dad has gay and lesbian friends. Therefore they take the Honey Boo Boo attitude on it "Ain't nothin wrong with bein' gay". Do they know how sex works between a man and a man, a woman and a woman or a man and a woman? Nope. They're kids. They know "John and Steven love each other like Alice and David do." It's all you need for kids, really.

(Wondering: does this mean fundies give graphic descriptions of heterosexual sex to their kids? I think not :D)

[freethemall]

Seriously?

A child asking "Mommy, why are those two men holding hands?" or "Daddy, what does gay mean?" is not going to lead to any explanations of how sex between gay people happens, any more than seeing two straight people leads to kids asking how sex happens.

We're talking about Russia here, and I'm Russian - trust me, you don't see gay men openly holding hands in Russia. It's a really sad situation in a country that's become such a mess, and most gay people (especially men) risk being publicly beat up if they show affection like that with no chance of any injustice being punished by the authorities. And you wouldn't have to worry about "what does gay mean?" if, as this law is trying, they never even hear the term in school/home/pop culture.

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

No shock here...I study gender and sexuality in Russia (and I'm from there), and even the most liberal people have very backwards (for lack of a better term) ideas on these topics. And your masculinity or femininity is just considered SUCH a huge definer of your identity, even more so than here in the States. Everything is a "male topic" or a "female topic", "male opinion" or a "female opinion", etc. They even have brands of beer that are "masculine" and "feminine". Gender non-conformity of any sort takes a loooong time to sink in over there. The fact that the majority of women have been in the workforce for almost 100 years, and the absence of religious indoctrination in the Soviet years, has done jack shit to erode this. They are still getting used to heterosexual cohabitation. :roll:

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

We're talking about Russia here, and I'm Russian - trust me, you don't see gay men openly holding hands in Russia. It's a really sad situation in a country that's become such a mess, and most gay people (especially men) risk being publicly beat up if they show affection like that with no chance of any injustice being punished by the authorities. And you wouldn't have to worry about "what does gay mean?" if, as this law is trying, they never even hear the term in school/home/pop culture.

When wasn't it? :lol:

BTW, the usual slang term for "gay" in Russian is "goluboi", which means "light blue". (Obviously there are worse ones too.) If your kid hears it, it's pretty easy to deflect if you choose to...

[Effie]

Another reason to ban Russia... It looks like I won't be visiting Russia during my life-time... which is fine with me. Except for the fascination in Russian literature, I have no connection to the country. Sometimes I joke with friends and family about having "Russia in the blood" but that's not technically true (I have roots in former Soviet).

[Rachel333]

I study Russian and when we were doing marriage vocabulary, which is quite gendered (it's been a while, but "she married" has the word for "husband" in it and vice versa) so we asked how you would talk about same-sex weddings. Our teacher insisted there was no reason to know that because that would never happen in Russia. It does sound like quite a hostile environment for gay people.

(I don't get the impression that the teacher herself is particularly anti-gay, as she did mention feeling frustrated in Russia when otherwise very liberal people are extremely homophobic.)

I know a lot of LGBT people would think me horrible for this, but I still really want to go to Russia and I'd like to spend enough time there to really improve my Russian speaking ability (which is pretty bad--the grammar is so complicated and even if I can get it right on paper it's so much harder to remember everything while speaking).

[crazyforkate]

Oh, crap, I'm moving there in a couple of months. Eek.