A Russian politician is warning his fellow lawmakers that approving an animal cruelty law is a slippery slope to giving gay people basic human rights.

On Tuesday, the Federation Council struck down a measure to ban cruelty against animals used in training hunting dogs. Ahead of the vote, Senator Sergei Kalashnikov told legislators that protecting animals is a "Western fad."

“We treat many Western fads with humor, including political correctness, the rights of sexual minorities and others,” he explained. “[But] any thought, however humanitarian, becomes absurd when carried to its logical conclusion.”

Passing the measure, he rationalized, is "following the same path, so to speak, of defending the rights of sexual minorities."

Stepan Zhiryakov, vice chair of the Agrarian Committee, made the point that dogs “should not be equated to sexual minorities.”

The Federation Council is the upper house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, equivalent to the U.S. Senate. The bill will now return to the State Duma, the legislature's lower body.