Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said that in some Western countries it is now possible to marry an animal. We checked whether this is actually true.

On September 21, 2021, a big issue was published in Argumenty i Fakty interview with Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council and former director of the FSB. The official, in particular, stated: “Under the hypocritical slogans of the struggle for equality in the West, open discrimination is being organized against citizens who adhere to traditional values. Just look at the systematic undermining of normal gender relations, when father and mother are renamed parents number one and two, children want to be given the right to choose their own gender, and in some places it comes to the legalization of marriages with animals.”

We were unable to find in authoritative sources even one report that countries in Europe and North America have legalized marriages between humans and animals. On the contrary, in recent years, a number of countries have adopted laws aimed at combating bestiality, although previously there were no corresponding bans in these countries. The new norms were approved, in particular, Canada, Denmark And Sweden. In Germany, a ban on sexual relations with animals was introduced in 2013; it was later challenged by two activists, but the authorities rejected their demand for the repeal of the law. In 2010, one German organized wedding with his beloved dying cat, but it was not official - the ceremony was conducted by an actress hired by a man.

Reports of marriages between humans and animals have come several times from countries that cannot be called Western. In 2003, the leaders of a small tribe in India forced a girl to marry a dog to “break the curse.” In 2006, a drunk Sudanese man was spotted during copulation with a goat - local elders obliged the man to marry the animal as punishment. In 2017, Indonesian media told a similar story about a young man and a cow on the island of Bali. An 18-year-old young man had to participate in a ritual wedding, after which a cow was drowned in the ocean. In all these cases, the marriages were not registered by the authorities of India, Sudan and Indonesia respectively.

But the message about the legalization of marriages between people and animals appeared in 2018 on the satirical news website Panorama. The comic article told about the Swede Erika Lindström and the horse Porgy, who, after two years of litigation, obtained a marriage license. Moreover, subsequently more than 50 Swedes allegedly turned to government authorities with applications to register relationships with animals. Of course, not a single reputable media outlet told about this story, and its characters were invented by the authors of Panorama. In the West in 2019, a similar “news” about Norway became popular, the primary source of which was also turned out to be satirical news site.

Although we cannot say for sure that Patrushev took information about unusual marriages from a report on a satirical website, Russian government officials have already found themselves in similar situations. For example, in the fall of 2020, State Duma deputy Alexey Zhuravlev appeared on the Rossiya 1 channel. told about brothels for zoophiles legalized in Denmark. The original source of this “news” turned out to be publication in 2017 on the French equivalent of Panorama - the SecretNews website. Anyway, how found out our fellow fact checkers, in an interview for Arguments and Facts, Patrushev made several more statements that do not correspond to reality.