Russian MP thinks Peppa Pig is turning kids gay. No, seriously
Peppa Pig characters during the Platinum Pageant on 5 June 2022 in London, England.(Getty/ Leon Neal – WPA Pool)
Russian MP Alexander Khinshtein has insisted, with no hint of irony, that LGBTQ+ media like Peppa Pig are a “tool of war”.
BBC Monitoring’s Francis Scarr posted a clip of a speech by Khinshtein to Twitter, in which he appears to be showing a powerpoint presentation.
“LGBT is nowadays a tool of hybrid war, and in that hybrid war, we must protect our traditional values,” said the MP. “We must protect our society and our children. Let me very quickly demonstrate what kind of propaganda is already being waged against our society.”
He flicked through screenshots of different shows, including the film Call Me by Your Name and and the adult animation South Park, before showing an image of Peppa Pig, which he described as “a seemingly very well-known cartoon”.
“In one episode,” he told the audience, “a polar bear is drawing a portrait of her family and says: ‘I live with my mummy and my other mummy.'”
Meanwhile in Moscow, Russian MP Alexander Khinshtein has declared war on South Park and Peppa Pig pic.twitter.com/3UCZijwkx6
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) October 17, 2022
The declaration of war on Peppa Pig comes as Russian lawmakers indicate they will expand the country’s so-called “gay propaganda” law, which criminalises the discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in media that made be seen by minors, to cover adults.
At a State Duma session on Monday (17 October), lawmakers discussed amendments, authored by Khinshtein himself, to the 2013 law.
According to the MP, the amendments would ban “dissemination of information or the commission of public actions aimed at the formation of non-traditional sexual attitudes, their attractiveness, a distorted idea of the equivalence of traditional and non-traditional relationships” to all people, regardless of age.
“The war is not only on the battlefield,” said Khinshtein. “It is also in the smartphones of our children, in cartoons and films… Our enemy really holds the propaganda of sodomy as the core of its influence.”
On the possibility of extending the propaganda ban to adults, Aleksandr Voronov, CEO of LGBTQ+ group Coming Out, previously told PinkNews: “If these amendments are adopted, the life of LGBT+ people in Russia will also become even more difficult, because there will be less representation in the media and social networks.
“This is an additional repressive lever for an already anti-humane system.”
