MOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/. Bills banning information promoting non-traditional sexual relations are meant to protect the rights of citizens, not restrict them, they should have been passed much earlier, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on Monday during a parliamentary hearing on the bills.
"In this case, we are discussing bills that are meant to protect citizens, to protect their rights. Not to restrict them, but to protect people from propaganda. If we said at the beginning that twice as many people in our country say that non-traditional values are bothering them, this propaganda is obviously harmful, we have to protect ourselves from this," Volodin said.
The State Duma Speaker stressed that Duma lawmakers should "guarantee a person's right to a family, to the opportunity to bear children, to raise them." According to Volodin, such bills "should have been adopted much earlier." "We are protecting [them] from the darkness that continues to spread over the world," he added.
Earlier, Volodin had instructed the Duma's relevant committees - on information policy, information technology and communications and on family, women and children's issues - to prepare for hearings. As the Duma chairman noted, the lower chamber received high-profile initiatives on the ban of information promoting non-traditional relationships. He stressed that this issue was very important because the lower chamber receives "a huge number of appeals with requests to adopt a law banning propaganda" that destroys Russian society and traditional family values.