A senior cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church has criticized gender reassignment surgeries and called for the prosecution of parents who teach their children that they can choose their gender.
"These operations are, in my opinion and in the opinion of the church, a crime against God," Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Russian Orthodox Church's department for external relations, said in an interview.
He explained that the church does not recognize a person's "new" gender after sex-confirmation surgery.
Hilarion reiterated that the Russian Orthodox Church “will never recognize such a way of life as normal … when children are taught from the cradle that there is a biological gender and a gender that they can choose.”
The cleric emphasized that parents who plant these ideas in their children's heads should be prosecuted.
According to Hilarion, children should wait until they are of full legal age to decide "whether they want to remain as God created them" or change their gender.
In Russia, sex-affirmation surgeries are permissible for citizens aged 18 and over if they are diagnosed as transsexual.
