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MOSCOW, July 16, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Russia rebuked a ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) this week that pushed the country to recognize same-sex “marriage.”
The ECHR’s order, handed down on Tuesday, held that Russia’s refusal to register homosexuals as “married” violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes a “right to family life,” and Article 14, which prohibits discrimination. The Strasbourg-based court has interpreted the articles in recent years to apply to same-sex unions, despite previous rulings to the contrary and no language about homosexuality in the text of the European Convention.
The case, Fedotova and Others v. Russia, was brought by several Russian homosexuals whose requests to register a notice of marriage were rejected, according to the ECHR.
“The Court found that Russia had an obligation to ensure respect for the applicants’ private and family life by providing a legal framework allowing them to have their relationships acknowledged and protected under domestic law,” the ECHR said.
The court claimed that measures that would effectively equate same-sex unions with heterosexual marriages “would not be in conflict with the ‘traditional understanding of marriage’ prevailing in Russia.” The ECHR added that “the most appropriate form of registration of same-sex unions remained at the discretion of the respondent State.”
Russia slammed the ECHR ruling, reaffirming on Tuesday that marriage in the country remains strictly between men and women. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that same-sex “marriages” are “not allowed” under Russia’s constitution, which was amended this year to state that the “institution of marriage is a union between a man and a woman.”
“The wording in the constitution is absolutely unambiguous and there is an unambiguous number of Russian citizens who support this unambiguous position,” Peskov said, according to Reuters. “No compromise on the form of registration needs to be looked for,” he added.
Russian politicians have also denounced Tuesday’s ECHR decision, State Duma deputy Vasily Piskarev calling it “clear systemic meddling.”
“The ruling, which tries to make Russia register same-sex marriages, contradicts the foundations of Russian rule of law and morality,” Vasily Piskarev, who leads a parliamentary commission on foreign interference, said. “This is clear systemic meddling in Russia’s internal affairs.”
The ECHR, the international court of the Council of Europe, does not have enforcement powers, and the Russian government enacted a law in 2015 allowing the country to overturn ECHR verdicts. Russia, which joined the Council of Europe in the 1990s, has not implemented nearly 90% of leading judgements from the court in the past ten years, according to the European Implementation Network.
Last Tuesday, the ECHR issued another ruling against Russia for letting a woman prohibit her gender-confused former husband from visiting their children. A Russian court had declared that being around the father, who had undergone surgery to impersonate the opposite sex, would have a “negative impact on the mental health” of the children.
The ECHR’s attempts to impose LGBT ideology on Russia resemble ongoing efforts by the European Union to force Hungary to rescind a new children protection law that bans pro-LGBT materials in schools. European Council president Ursula von der Leyen said last week that “the Commission will use the powers invested in it as the guardian on the treaties” against the legislation.
“Brussels bureaucrats have no business at all, no matter what they do we will not let LGBTQ activists among our children,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán responded.