Vladimir Putin has ordered the creation of an institute to study the behavior of LGBT people on the basis of a federal psychiatry center, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said at a meeting of the State Duma. This was brought to the attention of Important Stories.
During the discussion of the bill banning “gender reassignment”, MP Anatoly Wasserman asked the minister if the Ministry of Health was working on research on “psychiatric methods to bring these perceptions [of people’s gender roles and sexuality] into line with reality”.
The head of the Ministry replied that “on the instructions of the President, an additional institute is being created in Russia to study not only these, but also a number of behavioral areas, including social behavior”.
“This direction will also be taken further into mandatory scientific study,” Murashko assured, without specifying which “direction” and which “behavioral directions” he was referring to. The institute will be created on the basis of the Serbsky Center for Psychiatry”, the minister added.
Peter Tolstoy, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma, speaking at the same meeting said that the deputies received “a very emotional opinion of the Ministry of Health” on the draft law on the prohibition of “sex reassignment”. It said that the adoption of the initiative could cause an increase in suicides among transgender people.
Tolstoy recounted the department’s conclusion with mockery: “If the bill is passed, a stalemate will arise in which people whose gender is officially recognized by medical professionals as not matching the gender listed in their passports will not be able, poor people, to bring their passport data into line with the reality that has developed in their heads, and this could cause ethical, medical and social problems, and lead to – what do you think – an increase in suicides in the country.”
A bill to ban “gender reassignment” passed its first reading. The document proposes a ban on changing the gender marker in documents, as well as “medical interventions” in transgender transition. Exceptions are proposed to remove “congenital anomalies” in children. In this case medical intervention is allowed, but only by the decision of a medical commission.
