Putin rules out same-sex marriage in Russia

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, February 14 stressed that marriage should be solely a heterosexual union, The Mail Online reports.

"A marriage is a union of a man and woman," he said at a meeting with a Kremlin-appointed committee discussing new amendments to the Russian constitution.

"This is the right idea and it should be supported. We need to only think about how to formulate it and where,' he said after conservative lawmaker Olga Batalina said Russia's constitution should uphold 'traditional family values."

She claimed the family is under attack from attempts to introduce new terms like "parent number one" and "parent number two."

"This is not fantasy, this is reality in some countries," said Batalina, a senior lawmaker in the majority United Russia party who has lobbied for Russia's ban on foreign adoptions and a "gay propaganda" law which de-facto outlawed LGBT activism.

"As long as I'm president, we won't have (parent number one and parent number two). We will have 'dad' and 'mom'," Putin said.

Putin in January announced that Russia needed changes to the constitution written in 1993 and appointed a committee of dozens of lawmakers and celebrities to come up with ideas.