Georgia’s parliament speaker signs anti-LGBTQ+ bill into law
Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili. (Davit Kachkachishvili/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The speaker of Georgia’s parliament has signed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill into law after president Salome Zourabichvili failed to sign the legislation.
Zourabichvili returned the LGBT Propaganda bill to parliament on Wednesday (2 October), after lawmakers passed it last month.
But now, the country’s ruling party Georgian Dream, which introduced the bill, purportedly to protect Georgia’s Orthodox Christian Church from outsiders, has forced it through.
According to ABC News, speaker Shalva Papuashvili, said the law does “not reflect current, temporary, changing ideas and ideologies, but is based on common sense, historical experience and centuries-old Christian, Georgian and European values”.
The bill gives authorities the right to ban Pride events and flags, and bans gender-affirming care and LGBTQ+ people’s right to adopt, as well as the ability to nullify same-sex marriages performed on Georgian territory.
It follows in the footsteps of Russia’s so-called LGBT propaganda law, adopted more than a decade ago, which bans public displays of LGBTQ+ flags or identities, as well as depictions of queer people in the media.
The Georgian law has been condemned by queer activists, with Tamara Jakeli, the director of Tbilisi Pride, describing it as “the most terrible thing to happen to the LGBT community in Georgia”.
Activists have also claimed that the law is an attempt to drum up further support for Georgian Dream – founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili in 2021 – ahead of elections later this month, as the populist party seeks a fourth term in power.
The president has been a vocal opponent of the legislation and of Georgian Dream. She previously vetoed the “foreign influence” law, which requires groups that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents, but was overridden by parliamentarians.
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