It sounds like people here don’t even know Russia’s controversial law regarding homosexuality. It isn’t a crime to be a practicing homosexual in Russia, this law people keep talking about simply bans homosexual propaganda being targeted at minors. I don’t see why Catholics are up in arms about this. Catholic parents don’t you behave similarly when it comes to your kids? Don’t you try to prevent them from taking in the immoral messages regarding sex in our society? The uproar over this law by Catholics seems to be rooted not in morals, but in distinctly modern western sensibilities.
Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical, Pacem In Terris acknowledges our right to free speech, with the caveats of this speech being within the limits of the moral order and common good. (see here at #12:
vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html)
We don’t have a moral or civil right to call for the murder of someone else, we don’t have the moral right to blaspheme even though we have a civil right to do so according to the U.S. government. And in the case of Russia, how can we possibly say that someone has a moral right to promote immoral sexual practices to minors? I don’t believe the Russian government is in the wrong by enacting such a prohibition, I think under Pope Leo XIII’s remarks on free speech, that it complies with the Catholic understanding of free speech.