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Updated 10.50pm
RUSSIA HAS PASSED a controversial law banning transvestites, transsexuals and people with other so-called “disorders” from driving, prompting sharp criticism from rights activists, including a prominent Kremlin advisor.
The legislation, which took effect this week, says its aims at lowering the country’s high death rate from road accidents.
“Disorders”
It prohibits people diagnosed with a range of medical, personality and gender identity disorders from taking the wheel.
Though these include blindness and epilepsy, it also lists transvestites and transsexuals as well as people with sexual fetishes, voyeurs, paedophiles, pathological gamblers and kleptomaniacs
Passed by government decree signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the law follows other legislation viewed as discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation.
Since returning to the Kremlin for a third term in 2012, President Vladimir Putin has listed “healthy family” and traditional values as priorities and pushed an increasingly conservative agenda.
This has included a law banning any so-called “propaganda” or display of homosexuality in front of minors, which was decried by rights activists, Western government and stars including Madonna as a crackdown on gays and lesbians.
Russia has also banned adoptions by gay parents.
While Moscow formally decriminalised homosexuality in 1993, homophobia remains socially acceptable and few public figures have come out as gay. Human Rights Watch in December slammed Putin’s government for what it called “inaction” against rising homophobic attacks.
Reaction online
Much of the reaction online has been of bafflement or upset:
Backing the law
Those backing the new law include Vitaly Milonov, a regional lawmaker in Saint Petersburg and one of the strongest supporters of the law against gay “propaganda”. He praised it as an “absolutely correct and timely decision,” in comments to the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily.
“Those doctors and sex experts who oppose it are themselves basically perverts,” said Milonov, known for past homophobic outbursts.
A member of the rights council that advises the Kremlin, however, publicly challenged the new driving code as a potential breach of human rights.
Yelena Masyuk, a journalist, highlighted the “possible unfairness of removing the right to drive for those suffering from disorders of gender identity and sexual preference,” in a reaction Thursday on the council’s website.
“I don’t understand why, for example, people with fetishes, kleptomaniacs and transsexuals can’t drive a car,” she wrote. “It seems to me that this is a breach of the rights of Russian citizens.”
Russia needs to “study global practice” and “judge whether a ban on people with fetishes, exhibitionists, voyeurs, kleptomaniacs and others from taking the wheel is well-grounded,” she wrote.
It was not immediately clear how the law would be enforced, but Russians must undergo a medical exam to obtain a licence so anyone “diagnosed” by a doctor with any of the listed conditions could presumably be refused.
Critics of the law
The Association of Advocates of Russia for Rights joined the critics with a statement saying the driving code “obviously contradicts international norms and standards.”
By banning driving for “all transgender, bi-gender and asexual people, transvestites, cross-dressers and people who need gender correction (surgery)”, it could apply to many high-profile actors and pop stars popular in Russia, the legal advocacy group said.
This could include popular drag performer Verka Serdyuchka who performed at the Eurovision Song Contest for Ukraine, it noted.
- - © AFP, 2014 with additional reporting Aoife Barry
I’ll just have to check their website or social media while driving now for updates….
@⚡ Seánie ⚡: Could this possibly be connected? https://www.broadsheet.ie/2019/02/07/jam-today-rte-and-aa-roadwatch/
@Here’s How Podcast: Full story on the podcast here: https://blog.hereshow.ie/2019/02/heres-how-82-rte-and-the-aa/
@⚡ Seánie ⚡: You might have to pay for this service now|
Elaine o Sullivan AA road watch ! I’m gonna miss her voice
@Marko: and Ester Moore ODonoghue
@Marko: Arwen Foley was the one for me.
@Alan McArdle: Lorraine Keane anyone?
@Bill Spill: I certainly would. Met her at electric office many years ago. What a lady
@Adrian O’Donnell: Electric Office? Were you having a picnic together?
@Marko: sometimes sounded like she said the A 3 times. Maybe she’d been out the night before.
No more rind-a-bits being busy so.
@theseadoc: nothing will stop the dunkettle interchange being blocked
@Stuart:
@Stuart:
@Stuart: ah the memories of random places we only know through this broadcast! They might not even exist half of them.
Typical big buyer slashing overheads, and never mind who it affects.
@John Nolan: Ridiculous comment. Are they not entitled to make business decisions in their own interests? Why don’t you set up a traffic notification service and provide it to radio stations if it means so much to you?
What ever became of electric Eddie, eye in the sky… Probably dead and buried somewhere on the Con Colbert road, the only location with traffic back in the day
@Shay Murray: it’s driver is stuck at the Red Cow Roundabout
Who’s going to provide traffic reports for the radio stations now ? It’s a major loss for serious road users. It was fantastic to hear the traffic reports on the hour after the news and if something was happening on the road your driving on, you were notified of it. Another backwards step. In the UK, you don’t even have to wait for the news, the traffic reports interrupt whatever station your listening to.
@Sean Walsh: that is because the traffic situation in the UK is an absolute ball breaker. Not even comparable to here. Or was a ball breaker, pre covid..
Laren behan … a beautiful voice !
How will I find my in into the meeja now, love island won’t take me, AA roadwatch gone, crimewatch auditions go nowhere, and I won’t stoop to fair city levels just yet!
At least that’s a few annoying voices off the airwaves.
Useless anyway. Radio reports are brutal. Dublin 103.2 for traffic reports in real time.
@Jimmy Reid: hasn’t been the same since John left though.
Was never helpful to me. Everytime it was the same report “traffic heavy on the dunnekettle” its always heavy.
@Michael: The AA are losing money – most if not all insurance companies or garages provide breakdown cover
Have they an app? They could seek to integrate their real time info with Google maps.
@HarveyLemonade: Where there’s a will, there’s a Waze.
@HarveyLemonade: you can see traffic build ups on Google maps and Apple maps if you Amber lines on maps that’s traffic build up and red lines is traffic at a stop. Also Apple maps is eventually bringing in incident reporting to Ireland like Waze where you can report traffic, accidents speed checks etc
Patnav on Nova will have to do.
A fantastic podcast on the whole situation.
https://blog.hereshow.ie/2019/02/heres-how-82-rte-and-the-aa/?ref=Broadsheet
Bring back The eye in the Sky ! Helicopter service.
They were always rubbish anyway. I well remember the bad old days when I lived in Kildare, and you’d regularly hit a monster traffic jam on the N7 that AA Roadwatch would conveniently have forgotten to mention.
Lorraine Keane, AA Roadwatch
Why? Nooooooooo!
No more helpful mentions of their names by RTÉ presenters in order to help them up on the “celebrity” bandwagon ” ah well Swings and rindeabouts I suppose.
No more traffic “Nooze” then?
Karen Chew all day long.
Anyone remember the ozzie girl,BUMPER TO BUMPER..
@Peter Bell: that does rind a bell Peter.
@Peter Bell: that does ring a bell Peter.
Can’t read websites while driving
Delighted.
The AA and RTÉ themselves are no longer of any relevance.
What motorist would wish to have constant blabbering on a radio, same format from the same sounding stations who constantly have to announce their frequency or name to stay relevant.
Get an iPod or a subscription to Spotify or similar.
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