Today the deputies of the Russian State Duma rejected the legislative project on the introduction of legal responsibility for the instigation of hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation. The author of the project, the three times deputy Andrei Vul'f, proposed a sentence of up to five years for hate crimes exclusively on the basis of sexual orientation. No deputy supported the project, and 42 voted against it. Form the seats of the Parliament there were whispers about the fact that perhaps those deputies who rank themselves among the "sexual majority" need to defend themselves from Russian gays and lesbians...
Andrei Vul'f commented these developments for Gay.ru: "I had no illusions that this legislation could be approved, especially in the Duma of the obedient majority. This project was for me a political move, not a legislative one. It originated a few days after the medieval initiative by Gennadii Raikov, as an appropriate answer. What I wanted to do was to draw society's attention to the problem, and I tried to show that the obscurantism of Raikov's and the like of him, as well as their actions and claims, are illegal from the point of view of contemporary worldwide legal covenants", said Andrei Vul'f to Gay.ru's correspondent.
"The Duma's vote", continued Vul'f, "now only has a formal value. In the Russian Parliament there are no heterogeneous political forces".
Asked about what might have been the fate of the legislative proposal in the former Duma, the SPS member said that he thinks "the law might have got up to 50 votes in favour from "Yabloko", from the independent deputies and from the LDPR." According to Vul'f, an important role in "burying" the project was played by the "homophobic wing" of the Putin administration too.
"All that is linked to sexuality is generally met with fear and caution by the new deputies", concluded Vul'f.
It should be pointed out that, during the shooting of the programme "K bar'eru", which will be broadcasted tonight on NTV, Gennadii Raikov announced that, in spite of the negative opinion expressed by a committee of legal experts on his initiative, he still hopes that it will become part of the Penal Code. Thanks to this project, millions of Russians might be imprisoned for five years, fired from work and be subjected to public condemnation. At present Gennadii Raikov is a meber of the majoritarian parliamentary fraction "Edinaia Rossiia".
