“Yara Tychina, a young transgender woman and Astana resident, picketed on Vodno-Zelyoniy Boulevard next to the House of Ministries and the Parliament. Unfurling a handmade transgender flag, she demanded that the Senate, the Presidential Administration, and the President reject the ‘LGBT propaganda’ amendments. She was taken to the Yesilskoye District Precinct of the Astana Police. Further details are in the video.”
“[In which video Ms. Tychina says] Hello! I am Yara Tychina. I’m an ordinary citizen of Astana. I work in the coffeehouse [?] industry. I’m an openly trans women. I am protesting peacefully today because there are no other means to impact my country’s repressive policies. I don’t simply oppose this law. [It] violates my rights and freedoms, the rights and freedoms of my friends, my colleagues, the people in my life and, most importantly, my family, over half of whom are members of the LGBT minority community. I have carefully scrutinized this law and I can say truthfully that it has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘propaganda,’ since in black and white it says that any mention of LGBT—in a positive vein, in a neutral vein, it doesn’t matter which; in personal profiles, in personal conversations with people, it doesn’t matter where—is considered ‘propaganda.’ The fact that I’m an openly trans woman makes me a criminal, according to the new amendments. These amendments also don’t have anything whatsoever to do with ‘protecting children,’ since hundreds of Kazakhstani LGBT children, who had no way of influencing [who they are], will find themselves outlawed. They will be banned. They will be forbidden from talking about themselves on social media. They will be forbidden from gathering together in public or in private.
“[Ms. Tychina is interrupted by Astana police officers, who claim she is violating the law. She repeatedly states her willingness to go with them to the police station. She then continues.] I heartily and tearfully implore the Presidential Administration, the Senate, and the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and the Constitutional Court, if that doesn’t work, to reject these amendments. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Kazakhstanis, will unavoidably suffer. With these amendments, you will bridge the gap between Kazakhstan and Russia, but you will also drive away all international investments and significantly harm Kazakhstan’s standing in the international arena. But first of all you will harm people. You will harm my family. I implore you to stop it. Thank you!
“[Responding to a reporter, who asks her name, Ms. Tychina says] My name is Yara Tychina. I’m in the coffeehouse [?] industry. I have a small business. I’m an ordinary [female] citizen. [Responding to a question about her flag, she says] It’s a transgender flag, the flag of my identity. It’s homemade. [To the police officers] Let’s go! Thank you! [A police officer explains to the press that Ms. Tychina has not been detained but has voluntarily agreed to go with them to the station.]“
Source: werequest.kz (Instagram), 3 December 2025. Translated, from the Russian, by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Peter Leonard for the heads-up.
Police in Kazakhstan’s capital detained a transgender activist for staging a solitary protest against pending legislation prohibiting so-called “LGBT propaganda.” Yara Tychyna held up a handmade transgender flag near government buildings in downtown Astana and called for the Senate and the presidential administration to reject changes to the law, which are designed to proscribe “propaganda of non-traditional relations,” a formulation broad enough that positive portrayals of same-sex relations could be treated as prohibited content. Lawmakers have been debating the measure since the lower house approved it in November. Officials insist the restrictions are framed as child-protection rules. Critics warn that the draft’s language is vague and that equating LGBT themes with harmful content risks legitimising discrimination.
Source: Peter Leonard, “Central Asia’s week that was #82,” Havli, 3 December 2025
On Wednesday, November 12, the [lower house of the] Parliament of Kazakhstan (Mäjilis) unanimously passed a law banning “LGBT propaganda” in the media and on the internet. Violators face fines, and in the case of repeat violations, up to ten days in jail.
“Endeavoring to protect children from information detrimental to their health and development, provisions have been made to restrict the dissemination of information promoting pedophilia and non-traditional sexual orientation in public spaces, as well as via the media, telecommunications networks, and online platforms,” the document states.
The changes will affect nine laws. Violations of the ban will be punishable by a fine of up to forty minimum calculation indices (in 2025, this amounted to 157,000 tenge, or approximately 260 euros, or 24,500 rubles), or up to ten days in jail.
Kazakhstan’s Deputy Minister of Culture Yevgeny Kochetov explained that materials containing “propaganda of non-traditional relationships” would have to be labeled “18+.” Content that violates the law would be blocked.
Kochetov added that the strictures currently apply primarily to those who distribute materials. If minors attend a screening of a film rated 18+, the cinema’s managers, not the parents, would face a fine, he explained.
“If, for example, [men] are holding hands in the park, this is not considered propaganda. These are their personal boundaries, and there are no questions here,” said one of the sponsors of the bill, MP Yelnur Beisenbayev.
The Mäjilis initially sought to ban “LGBT propaganda,” in April 2024, by amending the law “On Mass Media.” They later proposed criminalizing “LGBT propaganda” and equating it with incitement to ethnic, social, or religious hatred.
When MPs began discussing banning “LGBT propaganda,” a petition entitled “We oppose open and covert LGBT propaganda in the R[epublic of] K[azakhstan]” was posted on the website E-Petition.kz. It was the third petition in the country to gather the fifty thousand signatures required for consideration by the government.
The Ministry of Culture and Information decided to partly accede to the petitioners’ demands—when it came to strictures aimed at “protecting and shielding adolescents and children from the promotion and cultivation of sexual relations.”
Consequently, the ban was presented as an amendment to the draft law on archiving.
Traditional values
In recent months, Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has repeatedly spoken about the need to protect “traditional values.” The day before the Mäjilis passed the bill, and ahead of his visit to Moscow, Tokayev published an article in Rossiiskaya Gazeta in which he spoke about the friendship between the two countries.
“We are united by a common take on traditional values, similar views on the pressing issues of contemporary life, and cooperation in ensuring the welfare of [our two] brotherly peoples,” Tokayev wrote.
In Russia, the law banning “LGBT propaganda” among minors was first introduced in St. Petersburg in 2011, and then at the federal level in 2013. In 2023, the Russian authorities went so far as to declare the “international LGBT movement” extremist.
As of July 2025, Human Rights Watch had catalogued more than one hundred criminal indictments and convictions [in Russia] for involvement in the “international LGBT movement” or for displaying symbols which the authorities attribute to this movement.
Following Russia’s lead, “LGBT propaganda” was banned in Hungary in 2021, and in Georgia in 2024.
LGBTQ+ in Kazakhstan
Homosexuality was decriminalized in Kazakhstan de facto in 1997 and de jure in 1998. Since 2003, transgender people have been able to change their gender marker in official documents.
In 2021, the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law ranked Kazakhstan 154th out of 175 countries in terms of public acceptance of LGBTQ+, below Uzbekistan, Russia, and Afghanistan.
The online platform Equaldex, which researches the rights of sexual minorities around the world, writes that “[a]ccording to recent survey data, there appears to be strong opposition to LGBTQ+ rights in Kazakhstan.”
Many human rights organizations have already criticized Kazakhstan’s ban on “LGBT propaganda.”
Human Rights Watch urged lawmakers to reject the bill. The NGO argues that the proposed amendments violate fundamental human rights and could make LGBTQ+ people in Kazakhstan more vulnerable.
Organizations including ILGA-Europe (the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association), the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), and TGEU (Trans Europe and Central Asia) have also issued a joint statement against the bill.
The Kazakhstani organization Queer.kz commented on the Mäjilis’s passing the amendments banning “LGBT propaganda” as follows: “We continue to write letters! Our organization will continue to work together with our colleagues to defend human rights and freedom!”
Source: “Kazakhstan parliament votes to ban ‘LGBT propaganda,'” BBC Russian Service, 12 November 2025. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Peter Leonard for the heads-up.
Over the past four years of America’s modern anti-transgender panic, Missouri has been one of its chief laboratories. Each legislative session brings a flood of new proposals targeting transgender people—with each year opening with often more than a dozen bills—and 2026 is already shaping up to continue that pattern. In the first batch of early bills, lawmakers introduced 21 anti-LGBTQ+ measures, many escalating the state’s enforcement tactics beyond even last year’s cruelties. One stands out in particular: a bill that would ban “social transition” in schools—blocking teachers from using a student’s chosen name or pronouns, even with parental consent.
The bill, SB1085, filed by Senator Joe Nicola, states in its summary that it would prohibit “public school staff members from encouraging minor students in their ‘social transition,’” which the measure defines as engaging in any activity “with the goal of helping a student become perceived as a member of the opposite biological sex.” The text defines social transition broadly—“participating” in a student’s gender transition based on “details such as his or her name, appearance, or behavior”—and bars schools from taking part in any conduct that could contribute to a student “not being perceived and treated as a member of the student’s biological sex.”
The bill explicitly forbids all school staff and faculty from “the use of alternative pronouns or names for the minor student, either in school records or otherwise.” Notably, it contains no provision for parental consent—meaning the restrictions apply not only to unsupportive parents but also to parents who affirm their transgender children. The measure appears to single out trans students exclusively: nothing in its text bars name changes for any other reason unrelated to gender transition.
You can see the provisions here:
The bill marks the latest front in anti-transgender legislation: an effort not just to ban medical transition for trans youth, but to prohibit any form of transition at all, including social transition. Earlier this year, reporting out of Texas showed how a similar law led teachers to suddenly deadname students who had used their affirmed names for years without issue. Variations of this language have surfaced in several states, but Missouri’s proposal is among the most explicit and far-reaching attempts yet to regulate social transition in schools.
The ban on social transition—even with parental permission—underscores a shift in how anti-trans legislation is being sold to the public. For years, supporters of bathroom bans, sports bans, and “don’t say gay” policies framed their efforts as battles for “parental rights.” Increasingly, though, that language has fallen away as lawmakers move to strip supportive parents of any authority at all, mirroring the approach in medical transition bans that override parental consent entirely. Under Missouri’s proposal, parents would have no right to approve their child’s affirmed name or pronouns, and any teacher who honors a family’s wishes could face the loss of their license.
The social-transition ban is just one front in a broader offensive. Missouri lawmakers have already filed bills to outlaw public drag by defining it as prurient “male or female impersonation,” to strip Pride flags from public schools, and to roll back nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in housing, employment, and public accommodations. And more proposals are almost certain to follow. When the legislature gavels in on January 8, the real question for observers won’t be whether these bills appear—they already have—but which ones Republican leadership chooses to fast-track. That early movement will signal just how aggressive Missouri intends to be in advancing its anti-LGBTQ agenda this session.
On April 27, 2023, Kansas became the first state in the country to institute a statewide definition of sex. “A ‘female’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” the law declared, “and a ‘male’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.” Since then dozens of state legislatures have introduced similar bills; sixteen have passed. In Indiana and Nebraska governors have issued executive orders to the same end. Each of these measures effectively strips transgender people of legal recognition.
The language of these policies usually distinguishes men from women by their reproductive capacity, which is assumed to be determined at birth or even at conception. Each statute mandates that its definitions of “sex,” “female,” and “male” be used whenever those words appear in any part of the state code. Some purport to be establishing a “women’s bill of rights,” as the titles of Kansas’s and Oklahoma’s bills suggest; Louisiana’s is titled “The Women’s Safety and Protection Act.” (On the other hand, the name of North Dakota’s bill—into which legislators slipped another term they wanted to define—captures the arbitrariness involved: “The Definition of Female, Male, Sex, and Scrap Metal Dealer.”)
This legislation is part of a broader onslaught. In the past few years Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced thousands of bills targeting trans people, with measures to ban puberty blockers and hormones for trans youth, bar trans girls and women from sports, mandate that bathroom access be based on birth sex, outlaw drag performances, and more. So far more than two hundred of these laws have passed, with grave, often life-changing consequences for the trans residents of red states across the country.
Continue reading “Trans(national) Solidarity”
Yuma’s Instagram “postcard” from Barcelona: “We are safe, we are resting. We cannot hide our happiness at being a family. Many THANKS to those who supported us, to those who dared to make themselves visible and express their support to us, and to those who supported us in person! Thanks to you, we have not given up! It was a difficult ordeal for all of us, we are all in rough psychological shape. But the sea, the sun and kindness are healing [us]) And we are still with you) and are ready to communicate. We are ready to tell you how it happened, what happened, and why) #wearenotamistake #vkusvill #familyequality
VkusVill’s ad spotlights a “matriarch,” her partner and two daughters who practice ethical veganism, support fair trade and provide shelter to LGBT people in need. Image: VkusVill Natural Products/Facebook/Moscow Times
Actor Alexander Filimonenko plays “Mom” in the homophobic campaign ad. Photo courtesy of social media and