Lawmakers in Kazakhstan are following the lead of Russian President Vladimir Putin with a bill to ban so-called “LGBTQ propaganda” in the former Soviet republic.

The lower house of Kazakhstan’s parliament on Wednesday approved the measure outlawing “LGBT propaganda” online and in the media, with fines mandated for violators, and up to 10 days in jail for repeat offenders, Reuters reports.

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The legislation now moves to the Kazakh senate, where it’s likely to pass.

President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has expressed support for the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which, like similar laws passed in Russia, Georgia and, Hungary, has been promoted as a bulwark against “degenerate” values imported from the West.

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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.

Deputy Irina Smirnova cited library books and cartoons featuring same-sex relationships as examples of the “propaganda” addressed by the bill.

“I saw books in the library that promote LGBT, where a prince falls in love with a prince, two boys,” she told lawmakers. “There are cartoons that allow this to be shown, there are magazines and comics where all this is promoted.” 

For months, President Tokayev has lobbied hard for passage of the bill — which is essentially copycat legislation of Russia’s own “anti-LGBTQ propaganda” measure — stressing the need to uphold what he and Putin call their countries’ “traditional values”.

Parties loyal to Tokayev dominate the lower house and voted unanimously in favor of the ban.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, Kazakhstan legalized homosexuality as it drew politically closer to Europe and the West.

But while the Muslim-majority nation is officially secular, it remains deeply conservative when it comes to social issues. With Putin‘s prodding, far-right politicians have exploited those social fissures to push the country back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

“We live in an independent and sovereign republic. Or are we already a colony of the Russian Federation?” Zhanar Sekerbayeva, co-founder of the feminist initiative, Feminita, asked at a recent LGBTQ+ rights roundtable in the country.  

Arj Tursynkan, an activist with the NGO Education Community, explained that language in the legislation was sweeping.

“Because of these amendments, people can be punished for anything – jokes, drawings, hugs,” he said.

The activist argued that the legislation is not just a legal text, but a test of Kazakhstan’s commitment to international norms of dignity and freedom.

Ahead of the vote, Belgium-based group International Partnership for Human Rights condemned the measure, saying it would “blatantly violate Kazakhstan’s international human rights commitments.”

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