MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. Russian society is morally protected against Western "gender obscurantism," Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his annual press conference on Thursday.
"I adhere to that traditional approach that a woman is a woman and a man is a man. A mother is a mother, a father is a father. And I hope that our society has the internal moral protection dictated by the traditional religious denominations of the Russian Federation," he said.
The head of state noted that the singularity and the strength of Russian society are conditioned by the fact that the country was shaped as a multidenominational and multinational one. "And we learned to treat each other with respect. And what does it mean? That also means treating the foundations of our traditional spiritual culture with respect. All the peoples of the Russian Federation, I would like to stress, all of them have a certain internal moral protection against this obscurantism that you’ve just mentioned," Putin said, replying to a journalist’s question on the new value system of the Western society which reconsiders traditional gender notions.
"If somebody thinks that a woman and a man are the same thing, they’re welcome to [their opinion], but a certain common sense should exist," the head of state pointed out.
The president cited the example of an incident in the US when a criminal serving time for rape declared that he was female and after a transfer to a women’s prison committed the same crime in his cell.
Putin expressed hope that the people of Russia "have sufficient internal deep immune systems of protection against this obscurantism." "And it is necessary to fight this not with direct orders and shouts and accusations but with the support for our traditional values," the Russian head of state asserted.