July 25, 2022
Watch: Russia's State TV Claims the West will 'Run Out of People' Thanks to LGBTQ+ Citizens
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
A commentator on Russian state-run TV came up with a novel theory: As LGBTQ+ citizens gain their rights in Western countries, those nations will simply disappear because they will no longer repopulate.
"Olga Skabeyeva – who fronts the '60 minutes' program on the state-controlled TV channel Russia One – made the claim as Kremlin lawmakers proposed extending a ban on discussing same-sex relationships," reported Yahoo! News.
"Skabeyeva, 37, dubbed Vladimir Putin's 'Iron Doll,' is a key mouthpiece of the Kremlin," Yahoo! News added.
Reporter Francis Scarr of the BBC posted a video clip of Skabeyeva's comments on Twitter, along with the explanation that the pundit "says Russia just needs to sit back and wait for the West to 'run out of people' as the LGBT population there grows..."
"In principle the American and Western nations are getting closer to disappearing," Skabeyeva declared. "At some point these people will simply stop reproducing and as a consequence those people will run out."
"Natural selection!" Skabeyeva added. "Only the very, very best will be left."
Scarr noted in the tweet: "For context, the population of Russia itself fell by 311,000 in the first four months of this year."
Skabeyeva made her comments against a backdrop of Russian lawmakers publicly mulling the idea of broadening the scope of the country's anti-LGBTQ+ "propaganda" law from 2013.
As previously reported, in its current form, the law forbids any expression of support for or belonging to the LGBTQ+ community where minors might witness it. But Mother Russia is so concerned for the moral well-being of her grown children that lawmakers are now considering making it a crime for any such expression to be made where adults could see or hear it, too.
"Authorities say they are defending morality in the face of 'un-Russian liberal values' promoted by the West, but human rights activists say the law has been broadly applied to intimidate Russia's LGBT community," Yahoo! News noted.
"Under the proposed changes, any event or act regarded as an attempt to promote homosexuality could incur a fine."
The comments also followed declarations aired on Russian state TV that Ukraine "does not exist," and Russia's invasion of the neighboring democracy is "a 'holy war' against the 'Satanic' values of Europe and the United States as well as the LGBTQ community," Newsweek reported.
In remarks made on Russia 1, the commander of Russian's Chechen forces in Ukraine, Apti Alaudinov, "praised the Russian president for preventing LGBTQ rights from advancing in their country, contending that the fight in Ukraine was a war against the marginalized community," Newsweek added.
Referring to American democracy as "the main enemy of mankind," and declaring that the military forces of Western nations are "the army of the Antichrist," Alaudinov lauded Putin for the fact that "We are not under the flags of the LGBT and as long as he's alive, we won't be under those flags."
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.