The President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, proposed an amendment to the country's Constitution that bans gay marriage. The proposal is part of a referendum that will take place in April and could keep Putin in power beyond 2024.
The package of proposals is moral in nature and has great appeal to conservatives and the president's allies in the Russian Orthodox Church.
In an interview with New York Times, Moscow-based sociologist Ekaterina Schulmann explained that this is an attempt to “reinvent voting as a referendum on traditional values”.
“They gave it this name to attract both those who are in favor of the proposals and those who oppose it”, he said. “If voter turnout is really high, then this new constitutional amendment will be legitimized by the domestic public and the international community.”
