Russian Senator Argues that Protecting Animals Will Lead to LGBT Rights

Earlier this year the chief executive of the Kenya Film Classification Board alleged that a pair of male lions who appeared to be mating at a reserve there must have learned the behavior from gay people who visited the park.

Now, Russian Senator Sergei Kalashnikov, who has no interest in protecting animals or LGBT people, said that maintaining rights for animals would lead to protecting gay rights. During the Federation Council's attempt to strike down a bill to protect against cruelty to animals, Kalashnikov said that keeping protections in place for animals could lead to protecting rights for LGBT people.

"We treat many western fads with humor, including political correctness, the rights of sexual minorities and others," Kalashnikov said prior to the vote, according to The Moscow Times. "Any thought, however humanitarian, becomes absurd when carried to its logical conclusion. We're not only passing a law that won't work for many reasons, but we're also demonstrating that we're following the same path, so to speak, of defending the rights of sexual minorities."

Russia's anti-gay stance is well documented especially since the implementation of the "Gay Propaganda" law adopted in 2013 that bans any positive mention of LGBT issues in venues accessible to minors and has been used against Pride parades and other events. Just this November a study by the Center for Independent Social Research in St. Petersburg found that anti-LGBT crimes in Russia had doubled since the law was passed.

When it seemed like Kalashnikov's comments were at the zenith of anti-LGBT rhetoric in the discussion about animal versus LGBT rights, the vice-chairman of the Agrarian Committee, Sen. Stepan Zhiryakov, offended by the comparison of animals to LGBT people for all of the wrong reasons said, "should not be equated to sexual minorities," according to The Moscow Times.