A Christian Democratic approach to LGBT

On behalf of the European Movement of Russia, we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the European LGBTQIA+ community (for convenience, hereinafter referred to as LGBT) on the beginning of Pride Month. Human rights organizations report that despite the fact that the legislation in the EU countries regarding the protection of minorities is almost perfect, European LGBT people themselves continue to regularly face discrimination from society, and are sometimes harassed and become victims of hate crimes.

Things are incomparably worse in today's Putin's Russia, which has the most intolerant population on the European continent after Azerbaijan. After the regime reoriented its foreign policy in 2014 from seeking compromise with the West to open confrontation, Putin tacitly declared hatred of sexual minorities as one of the pillars of the national idea of the Russia he usurped. Since then, the lives of our compatriots born with a different sexual orientation than the heterosexual one have become unbearable: regular harassment, harassment, indifference or even contempt from the law enforcement agencies, widespread discrimination - this is what they have to face throughout their entire lives. The situation is no better for human rights defenders: the recognition of LGBT organizations as foreign agents, countless administrative protocols under the ridiculous article on "propaganda of homosexuality," police raids during almost all thematic events, attacks on activists and the pressure exerted on them... We cannot fail to mention that, according to international human rights organizations, the Chechen authorities have been involved in the killing of members of the LGBT community on the territory of the Chechen Republic.

No matter whether you are a liberal, a conservative, a socialist or anything else, we should all agree that LGBT issues such as same-sex marriages, adoptions, blood donations and civil unions should be dealt with in a civilized debate and not by police raids, criminal cases and detentions. We must all take a strong stand against discrimination and repression; it is our moral obligation as human beings.

LGBT and Christian Democracy

The European Parliament Intergroup on LGBT Rights has 18 members of the Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP), one of whom is even the current vice president of the Intergroup.

Why do socially conservative Christian Democrats raise the problems of the LGBT community and try to solve them? - This is likely to be the question the surprised Russian will be asking. After all, in our country even liberals and social democrats are afraid to raise the topic of protecting the rights of sexual minorities and transgender people, let alone Russian conservatives, who compete with each other in their hostility to LGBT people.

The answer will surprise you with its banality: Christian Democrats are in favor of LGBT people because they are guided by Christian values. The same applies to Western conservatives, who are regularly ridiculed by Russians for doing so.

At this point the reader may become indignant and ask how support for the LGBT community can come from Christian values if homosexual sexual relations are a sin in Christianity.

First, it is worth clarifying the attitude of Christianity itself toward LGBT people. Of course, homosexual relationships themselves are recognized by virtually all churches as sinful because they are called such in the Bible. The explicit biblical prohibition of same-sex relationships has been a major cause of persecution of sexual minorities for much of history, but attitudes toward LGBT persons changed as soon as scientists proved the innate and normalcy of all sexual orientations. In the eyes of the church, homosexuality could no longer be seen as a "strange and God-awful pastime," since there was confirmation that sexual orientation is not something one chooses. The Christian approach has also changed: the very fact that a person is bi or homosexual cannot be considered a sin, since a person did not choose who he was born into. Only conscious actions can be considered sinful in Christianity, which is why most churches (including Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches) have begun to perceive homosexuals' innate attraction to members of their own sex as a test sent from above, calling on LGBT people to abstain from sexual relations altogether. It is important to note here that Christianity is based on voluntary religious observance-the Bible tells us that God gave people free rein and did nothing to stop sin (remember the forbidden fruit moment). Knowing that free will would allow people to sin, even knowing the future and that the devil would try to tempt people, God did not interfere, but allowed people to choose to live as they wished or to live according to the established rules. And at any moment the sinner has a chance to repent and take the path to salvation.

From a Christian standpoint, a person cannot be forced into heaven. If a person does not want to follow the Christian rules, that is his choice and the church can only try to change his mind. But the church cannot forbid him the way he wants. At the same time, Christianity is strongly opposed to any form of discrimination because an important principle for it is respect for the individual and his dignity.

All of this explains the behavior of the Christian Democrats. Their policy is a consistent adherence to democratic convictions together with Christian values. As an example, the former head of the CDU, Angela Merkel, criticized the Hungarian law discriminating against LGBT people in 2021, in 2017 she strongly condemned the persecution of LGBT people in Russia, but in the same 2017 she voted with the majority of her party members against the legalization of same-sex marriage in Germany. Merkel's Christian values, on the one hand, prevent her from supporting or silently observing discrimination against people for their innate characteristics and, on the other, from violating "the sanctity of marriage as the union of a man and a woman."

Some progressive Christian Democrats do not consider the legalization of same-sex marriage to be at variance with their beliefs at all. The Christian Democratic European People's Party (EPP) supported Roberta Metsola's decision to vote for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Malta, calling it "being on the right side of history".

Another defining principle for the Christian Democrats that they enshrined in European law at the founding of the European Union is the principle of subsidiarity. According to it, all decisions are made "from the bottom up" with maximum decentralization. This principle excludes the imposition of any policy by the central government, and it can explain the motivation of some Christian Democrats to support the legalization of same-sex marriage, because such appeals in Europe usually come from society itself, and are shared by most of its participants.

All of the above applies not only to Christian Democrats, but also to conservatives in the West, because they are also guided by Christian morality. This is why we can see conservatives participating in pride marches, having LGBT factions, and fighting discrimination.

Why do Russian conservatives support discrimination against sexual minorities and repression of the LGBT community?

Western society is structured very differently.

In the EU countries the church is separate from the state; in Putin's Russia, it is informally embedded in the system of state power. This tradition of symbiosis between church and state authority dates back to Tsarist Russia, but was consolidated in its present form during the Soviet era, under Stalin, when the Bolsheviks stopped fighting against the Orthodox Church and decided to turn it into one of their political instruments and subordinate it to the Communist Party. With the collapse of the USSR, the Orthodox Church did not gain independence from the authorities and still continues to be a tool for them, for example, to justify Putin's foreign policy actions in Russia.

European conservatives are guided by democratic principles, while Russian conservatives are guided by authoritarian principles inherited from the Tsarist and Bolshevik times. In other words, for Western conservatives, the state is primarily an instrument through which the people exercise their power. It is inconceivable without the people and has no subjectivity of its own. For Russian conservatives, the government and the ruling party are a kind of "ringleader," who sets the direction for his "pack" - the people - that it considers necessary and right.

Angela Merkel allowed her socially conservative party to vote at its own discretion on the issue of legalizing same-sex marriage, with 225 of the 309 members voting against and 75 voting in favor. In the Russian socially conservative party, a vote for something like this would have inevitably led to the expulsion of the MP from the party.

Despite its reliance on conservatism, Putin's regime has much more in common with Bolshevism and Tsarism than with the West, and with it, conservative social movements. After all, Russia has had almost no time to borrow the Western political system, which has ideologies like Christian democracy, liberalism, socialism, and social democracy. Partial democratization in 1905 was followed by the long-awaited Westernization, a process that all today's advanced countries went through, which reached its peak in the February Revolution, but was cut short with the Bolshevik coup that followed in the same year. Because of the failure of Westernization in 1917, seventy years of living in a totalitarian USSR, and the rapid emergence of Putinism after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian conservatives never had time to adopt the values of Western conservatives. Conservatism and Orthodoxy in Putin's Russia are a wrapper, but the autocratic basis formerly used by the Bolsheviks and monarchists has remained intact.

In order to change Russian conservatism, it is necessary to change the very foundation of Russia-it must become a Western, European country. Otherwise, Russians will continue to perceive any Western thought, be it liberalism, Christian democracy, or Western conservatism, as something foreign and alien.