The US and other countries have been flaunting their gay pride in Russia during the Olympics, but it doesn’t look like it is taking the hint. Instead of the Olympics serving as a way to open Russian minds, the steadfastly anti-gay country has remained steadfastly anti-gay. It might be fun to laugh at Russia’s discomfort with anything homoerotic (the Canadian’s did it best, with an ad that featured the tagline: “The Games have always been a little gay. Let’s fight to keep it that way.”), but meanwhile Russia has been continuing to roll back the rights of gays in their country – and now, abroad.
While the world was busy watching curling competitions, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed a new measure that banned single people (gay or straight) living in any country where gay marriage is legal from adopting Russian children. Apparently the law it passed last July that banned all same-sex couples from adopting kids from Russia wasn’t strong enough. Russia now seeks to prevent children born within its borders from ever even having the possibility of seeing two people of the same gender holding hands.
Russia argues that it is doing what is best for the children, saying the measure is intended to,
“guarantee a full and harmonious development for adopted children and to safeguard their psyche and consciousness from possible unwanted influence such as artificial forcing of non-traditional sexual behavior and the suffering, complexes and stresses that, according to psychologists’ studies, are often experienced by kids raised in same-sex families.”
The idea that children raised by gay parents are exposed to higher stresses and worse off psychologically is scientifically unproven but pervasive. The most rigorous research done on the subject has found that, like heterosexual couples, parenting depends largely on the people, not their orientation.
A study conducted by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found that a happy home is more important than a straight one (who would have thought?):
They compared 104 families — 50 of which had opposite-sex parents, 29 with gay fathers and 25 with lesbian mothers — with regard to how happy and well-functioning the children were.
Researchers found that in gay families, childcare activities were more evenly split; in opposite-sex parented families, the tasks were split more by traditional gender roles. But regardless of sexuality, the researchers discovered that the behavioral well-being of the child depended considerably more on how happy the parents were with the way they had divided childcare chores.
“While actual divisions of childcare tasks such as feeding, dressing, and taking time to play with kids were unrelated to children’s adjustment,” said researcher Rachel H. Farr, “it was the parents who were most satisfied with their arrangements with each other who had children with fewer behavior problems, such as acting out or showing aggressive behavior.”
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Instead of helping children by keeping them away from nonexistent gay influence, Russia is in fact condemning many of their own to a life without a family. Several of the biggest adopters of Russian children – France, in particular – will now be banned. That leaves
thousands of children, who might otherwise have been placed somewhere, left at orphanages and foster homes, .
The problem will only get worse for Russia as more countries embrace gay marriage. Should Russia’s ban remain on the books, it will find less and less countries that can legally adopt its unplaced children. Currently there are
15 countries in the world that have allow same-sex marriages, that number is expected to keep rising year by year. Russia is playing a dangerous game with the lives of the children in its care and may soon find itself without a friend in the international community. For a law that is rationalized as being important for the welfare of the young, ironically it’s those that it harms most.
