Georgia's president won't sign a horrific anti-LGBTQ+ bill. It's still going to become law.

RIGA, LATVIA. 26th September 2023. Salome Zourabichvili, President of Georgia., during meeting with Edgars Rinkevics, President of Latvia.
Photo: Shutterstock

Georgia President Salome Zourabichvili has refused to sign a piece of vicious anti-LGBTQ+ legislation recently passed by the country’s parliament.

Modeled on Russian anti-LGBTQ+ laws and proposed by the Georgian Dream Party, the legislation would impose draconian curbs on LGBTQ+ rights and provide a legal basis for Georgian authorities to outlaw Pride events, the rainbow flag, and public displays of affection, and also to impose censorship of films and books. It restates an existing ban on same-sex marriage and outlaws gender-affirming surgery in the country.

In addition to outlawing public gatherings “promoting” same-sex relationships, the legislation would also limit adoption to heterosexuals, ban gender changes on official identification, and outlaw “LGBT propaganda” in education.

Georgian Dream party leaders say the legislation is critical to safeguarding Georgia from degenerate moral influences exported from the West. Its passage is one more indication the country is tilting its allegiance toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia. With it, the former Soviet republic’s bid to join the European Union looks ever more unlikely.

Zourabichvili rejected the bill without vetoing it. And because she holds mostly ceremonial powers, Parliament’s speaker, Shalva Papuashvili, is expected to sign the bill into law, according to The Guardian.

Nevertheless, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze was not happy with Zourabichvili’s decision.

“The fact that Salome Zourabichvili did not stand on the side of protecting traditional and family values, not on the side of protecting the interests of minors, but on the side of pseudo-liberal propaganda, once again shows what political choice this person made and what forces [she] is governed by,” said Kobakhidze said in a statement.

Opponents say the bill and timing of the measure are aimed at whipping support for the far-right government ahead of the nation’s October 25 elections. Georgian Dream is looking to increase its majority with its fourth turn at the polls.

“This law is the most terrible thing to happen to the LGBT community in Georgia,” Tamara Jakeli, director of campaign group Tbilisi Pride, told Reuters. “We will most likely have to shut down. There is no way for us to continue functioning.”

Under Georgian Dream’s leadership and with the complicity of the Orthodox Church, Georgia has become ever more hostile to LGBTQ+ people. Polls show broad disapproval of same-sex relationships, and the constitution already bans same-sex marriage.

Tbilisi’s annual Pride marches have repeatedly come under physical attack by right-wing mobs, with reports some of those individuals have traveled from Russia to inflame tensions.

And the day after Parliament passed the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, a Georgian transgender model and popular influencer was stabbed to death in her apartment in what authorities called a “premeditated” attack.

Georgian Dream members of Parliament have also proposed introducing “genetic” requirements in establishing legal marriage, whereby marriage would be a union of a “genetic woman” and a “genetic man.”

Georgia enjoyed years of progress on human and LGBTQ+ rights following the Rose Revolution in 2003, as a majority of citizens supported a pro-Western turn and integration into the European Union and NATO.

The rise of the Georgian Dream party in the last ten years, however, has seen the government reorienting toward its former colonizer, with the Church encouraging the rapprochement.

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Originally published here.