‘We will have papa and mamma’: Putin says no to gay ‘marriage’ in Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman should be added to the Russian constitution, adding that under his leadership Russia would not adopt terms such “parent number 1” and “parent number 2.”
Putin made the comments last Thursday at a meeting to discuss Russian constitutional reform. During a discussion on family values in Russia, conservative lawmaker, Olga Batalina, said that some people would like the word “family” to be defined in the constitution as a “union of a man and a woman.”“We need to clarify some things. A marriage is a union of a man and woman,” Putin responded. “'A family is a different thing, but the idea is right and it should be supported. We need to only think about how to formulate it and where.”
Batalina also claimed that the family is under attack from attempts to introduce new terms like “parent number one” and “parent number two.”
“This is not fantasy, this is reality in some countries,” she said.
Putin responded: “As for ‘parent #1’ and ‘parent #2’, I have already publicly said it and I will repeat it once more: as long as I am president, we will not have parents #1 and #2, we will have ‘papa’ and ‘mamma.’”
Last year France passed a law requiring that schools replace the words “mother” and “father” in their documents with “parent 1” and “parent 2.” In Italy in 2018, then Deputy Prime Minister, Matteo Salvini, ordered that the words “parent 1” and “parent 2” be deleted from online government forms and replaced with “mother” and “father.”
In 2013 Putin signed a bill to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality, “same-sex marriage,” and Gay Pride parades throughout the Russian Federation. The law imposes stiff fines or prison terms for spreading “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations.” He also supported measures to stop same-sex couples “married” overseas from adopting children in Russia.
