Interfax: Russia did not violate intl law by banning homosexuality propaganda among minors – children’s ombudsman

MOSCOW. Nov 14 (Interfax) – Russia did not violate international law by imposing a ban on propaganda of homosexual relations among minors, Russian presidential children’s rights envoy Pavel Astakhov says.

“Propaganda of homosexuality among children violates commonly accepted principles and norms of international law,” the envoy’s press service quoted him as saying at the international parliamentary forum on ‘Constitution. Democracy. Parliamentarianism’ on Thursday.

“An adults’ right to the inviolability of their private lives and to freedom of speech and artistic expression should not be turned into the right to deprave children, violate their sexual integrity, and cause harm to their health and their moral and mental development,” he said.

The classical Roman law stipulated that marriage is a union of a man and a woman, he said.

“The Roman Republic, which knew quite a variety of forms of relationships and unions, withstood the temptation and persuasions to institute same-sex relationships in the family law system. The Roman classics realized the danger of misinterpreting the legal nature of the family concept,” Astakhov said.

Such misinterpretation could in time lead to the destruction of moral pillars and the need to amend the inheritance law, he said.

“You are already forced to abolish the concepts of mother and father,” Astakhov said addressing the forum guests. “Then you will have to deal with grandmothers, grandfathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, and aunts. Such centuries-long fundamental notions as mother and father will vanish through nearsightedness and elementary legal ignorance of those who adopt such laws,” he said.

“On what grounds are you negating the entire historical experience, thousands of years of human traditions, and fundamentals of law for the sake of an artificial and unviable construction of an infertile pseudo-family?” Astakhov said at the forum.

The Russian law “has never recognized and will not recognize such relations as family ones,” he said.

“We cherish our history and our traditional spiritual and family values, but at the same time our law and state do not persecute and are not going to persecute those who choose other forms of relationships,” he said.