Russia’s foreign minister has made the unlikely claim that schools in a number of Western countries are teaching children that Jesus was bisexual.

Minister Sergei Lavrov, 71, painted the improbable picture in an essay for the Russian Kommersant newspaper titled “The Law, Rights, and the Rules,” published Monday (28 June).

In it he delivered a sweeping critique of “boundlessly permissive” liberal democracies which he believes “encroach on human nature”, starting with Jesus’ sexuality.

“Attempts by reasonable politicians to shield the younger generation from aggressive LGBT propaganda are met with bellicose protests from the ‘enlightened Europe,’” he said.

“All world religions, the genetic code of the planet’s key civilisations, are under attack. In a number of Western countries, children are being persuaded as part of the school curriculum that Jesus Christ was bisexual.”

Lavrov did not provide examples to support his far-fetched claim, nor did he state which countries he was referring to.

However, It’s My City news traced the likely origins of his story to a viral TikTok of an Australian mother eavesdropping on her children debating Jesus’ sexual orientation.

In the video her young son suggests that Jesus was “bi and non-binary,” because “he loves everyone in the world” and “he wears a dress and he’s a man”.

“We learned it at school,” the boy insists in response to his mother’s protests.

Russian observers speculated that the minister’s critique of Western values was aimed at drumming up support from a socially conservative domestic audience ahead of key parliamentary elections this autumn.

“While proclaiming the ‘right’ to interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries for the sake of promoting democracy as it understands it, the West instantly loses all interest when we raise the prospect of making international relations more democratic,” he said.

“The United States is at the forefront of state interference in church affairs, openly seeking to drive a wedge into the Orthodox world, whose values are viewed as a powerful spiritual obstacle for the liberal concept of boundless permissiveness.”

Despite his fervent criticism of Western education and values, Lavrov chose to have his own daughter, Yekaterina, schooled in America.