Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a set of amendments that includes a ban on LGBTQ+ speech on December 30.

The bill, modeled on Russia’s ban on LGBTQ+ speech, included fines and jail time for people found to have spread pro-LGBTQ+ messages in the media (including education and advertising materials) or on social media. The bill bans “the use of media, literature, entertainment, and other events that promote non-traditional sexual relations and pedophilia,” linking LGBTQ+ identities with child sex abuse, an old negative stereotype used to drum up support for homophobia.

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“Children and teenagers are exposed to information online every day that can negatively impact their ideas about family, morality, and the future,” Kazakh Education Minister Gani Beisembayev told lawmakers before the vote.

LGBTQ+ advocates denounced the new law.

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“Any attempt to ban visibility, discussion, or support of LGBT people is not the defense of traditional values; it’s a rejection of elementary human rights,” said activist Abdel Mukhtarov at a press conference.

The bill stipulates that fines for supporting LGBTQ+ people in the media will be 150,000 Kazakh tenge (about $290), with a 300,000 tenge ($580) fine for subsequent offenses.

The bill was inspired by a 2024 citizens’ petition that garnered over 50,000 signatures. It was passed by the lower chamber of parliament in early November and by the country’s Senate in December. President Tokayev, who has a history of making anti-LGBTQ+ comments, signed it later that month.

“For decades, many countries have had so-called democratic moral values foisted on them, including LGBT,” Tokayev said in a speech in March 2025, according to eurasianet.

Supporters of the law weren’t able to point to many examples of the type of speech that they would consider propaganda, and critics of the law say that it will be used to stamp out any pro-LGBTQ+ speech in public.

One member of parliament who supported the law showed a video of local activists who made a large image of a vagina for a public event and said that this is an example of something that the law would ban.

“This here is an indecent photo,” he said. “How can you put this on social media?”

At around the time that the petition was submitted, a Ministry of Health committee of experts issued a report on the effects of LGBTQ+ people on youth and found no evidence of negative influence.

“Rather, according to our research, the influence of the LGBT movement on the sexual identity of minors has a positive character,” the report stated. “Teenagers belonging to [sexual] minorities can learn about their rights, receive support, and avoid isolation.”

The report was removed from the ministry’s website just after the process to pass the anti-LGBTQ+ bill was started.

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