Were there any changes? New Russian Constitution as an example of queer
institutionalism
Dmitrii Tolkachev, PhD student, Faculty of Social Science, Higher School of
Economics, Moscow
In July 2020, the Russian Constitution was changed to keep Vladimir Putin in
power. One of the amendments concerns the concept of marriage as the union of a
man and a woman. The Constitutional Court of Russia, commenting on the
amendments, drew attention to the prohibition of discrimination based on sexual
orientation. The Russian authorities’ discourse on homosexuality is unstable. On
the one hand, there is an attempt to reinvent “traditional values”. On the other
hand, it is essential to prevent human rights violations. The situation of creating
unstable political institutions is practiced continuously in Russia. Sexual
orientation issues are no exception. I propose to analyze how legislative changes
took place, how the discourse about homosexuality changed in Russia after the
regional laws on “homosexual propaganda” and Federal law on “non-traditional
sexual relationships”. I suggest analyzing changes on the political map of Russia
using a new approach of queer institutionalism to show how Russian authorities’
discourse about homosexuality defined Russian institutional changes.