Free Republic

Russian MPs have voted unanimously to ban any form of sex change, with President Putin’s allies claiming that the move was necessary to defend the motherland against “western anti-family ideology”. The bill, which was approved in its first reading, will prohibit “medical interventions aimed at changing the sex of a person” and “the state registration of a change of gender without an operation”. Pyotr Tolstoy, deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, said that the law would “erect a barrier” against what Putin had described as a western threat to the country’s “traditional values”. “I really want the guys who are...