1/7 Among much real and imagined bad news from Russia, this really is awful  https://bit.ly/2SeZaRJ 

2/7 Russia’s Investigative Committee has arrested staff & doctors of companies that provided surrogacy services to single men (in reality, some of them in gay couples), is removing children from their families, & threatening to charge the fathers with trafficking children.

3/7 There is ongoing discussion about the moral and legal aspects of surrogacy around the world. But the arguments the Russian authorities are using in this particular case have nothing to do with protecting women or children.

4/7 Investigators claim that the fathers had no right to use the procedure of artificial insemination, because they are of “non traditional sexual orientation.”

5/7 Their crazed logic runs this way: artificial insemination is a fertility treatment given to women and couples, but a healthy single man cannot be infertile, and a single man of non-traditional sexual orientation can’t be a sperm donor, so it must be child trafficking.

6/7 Last year, a gay Russian couple had to emigrate when authorities tried to seize custody of their adopted children who had lived with them for years, purely on the grounds that the parents were in a same sex partnership. The officials who had allowed the adoption were punished

7/7 As time goes by, the anti-gay legislation—which in the beginning seemed more rhetorical than practical—is gradually taking on a chilling and very real form.