Edit: I didn't post the following quotes to say he's a communist. He's pivoting to centre-left positions with his rhetoric and 6 year plan. He called for reducing poverty by 2% in 6 years and for progressive taxation on the rich.
The true elite are all those serving Russia. Workers and soldiers, reliable, trustable, who have proven their devotion to Russia, the worthy people.
“The very word ‘elite’ has largely been discredited by those who, having no merit to society, consider themselves to be some kind of a caste with special rights and privileges. I specifically mean those who, in previous years, filled their pockets through all sorts of processes in the economy of the 1990s. Those are definitely not the elite,” the president said.
Except being queer isn't a choice you make when you're an adult. There are plenty of queer kids who discovered their gender or sexuality early enough to know. They've banned anything even remotely educational that isn't just cisheteronormative, how is that beneficial to kids?
I never implied it was beneficial, I just said that that is as far as his conservatism goes.
It was in reply to someone saying that Putin was criminalizing being queer wholesale, which is false.
If you ban anything and everything that helps queer people understand themselves and their bodies better you're de facto banning queer people, especially when there's no effort to actually support them.
He hates rainbow imperialism (the usual excuse), cool, why not replace it with normalization of queer people? Education on queer people and how we've always been a part of the human experience, and how we're being used for the purpose of imperialism. Medical programs that could help kids transition easier. Instead it's about "traditional values"; they're even starting up a program for American bigots who rightfully get cancelled for their bigotry to live in Russia under the guise of "conservative views", the very same conservative views that brought colonialism to African shores and forced them to change their culture. This is what those people celebrate.
So no I'm not giving him a pass for any of that.