Propagating gender reassignment among children should be a criminal offence, Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev, the chairman of External Church Relations Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, recently declared on “Russia 24” TV network. His comment was made in response to Joe Biden’s recent statement of support for the supposed right of children to choose their gender. “The idea that an eight-year-old child or a 10-year-old child decides you know, I decided I want to be transgender. That’s what I think I’d like to be,” Biden said with his customary eloquence at a televised Town Hall event on October 16. Bishop Hilarion is a leading Russian theologian, prolific author, composer, and promoter of Christian unity. Sex reassignment surgery is “nothing more than mutilation,” he replied to Russia 24 presenter Yekaterina Gracheva. He believes it is a crime to subject children to such procedures, or even to propagate them: