New bill in Georgia to ban LGBT marches and events
New bill in Georgia to ban LGBT marches and events
At the beginning of April, a new bill was submitted to the Georgian Parliament aiming to ban LGBT marches and events. Speaking about the bill, Georgian Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili stated that the proposal was “initiated and signed” by Georgian citizens.
Previously, on October 3, 2024, Georgia had enacted the “Law on the Protection of Family Values and Minors” which prohibits LGBT propaganda. With this legislation, same-sex marriages, gender reassignment procedures, adoption by non-heterosexual individuals, LGBT-related content in educational institutions and mass media, as well as public demonstrations promoting LGBT visibility, were banned.
Tolga Dişçi from “Aydınlık Europe”, Türkiye’s Aydınlık newspaper’s supplement for Europe, conducted an interview with Georgian political scientist Shota Apkhaidze on the bill.
We present the interview translated into English.
Curbing Western influence
One of the main reasons for the bill is said the fact that “the West uses LGBT as a weapon of ideological imposition”. Do you agree with this?
This bill should have been initially adopted in 2012, when the Georgian Dream became a right-wing party. Well, unfortunately, they were flirting with the West back then.
Then, the Georgian dream thought that it was possible to come to an agreement with the West, that they would accept Georgia with its values, with its religion, with its traditions, but these hopes did not come true. The West does not need such a Georgia. The West requires an ultra-liberal Georgia. The West supports the liberal opposition, which is against Georgian traditions, our religious values.
The confrontation between the Georgian dream, so to speak, and the West has reached a point where the Georgian dream has begun to adopt laws that limit Western influence of Western geopolitics in Georgia.
The West is continuously speculating over these issues of LGBT, using them for its geopolitical objectives. Now, this law will a set a limit to that and create a new norm.
Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili announced that this bill was an initiative signed by citizens. Why do you think citizens submitted such a proposal? Why did Georgian citizens do that?
As for the ban on the LGBT march: This is very timely even because every year specifically Western non-government non-organizations funds and the type of corps support the holding of the LGBT Marshal, what causes further is already this certain provocation causes division of our society and conflict.
The West knows how Georgian society reacts to such LGBT marches, and they are specially held to show that supposedly we do not have democracy, and they beat, and conflicts occur during the attempt to hold such marches.
Therefore, this law will now partly limit and regulate this issue regarding the LGBT march.
The European elite backs LGBT
If we look at Europe in particular, LGBT propaganda is being carried out by the state in countries that advocate for imperialism. For example, Germany enacts legal regulations that pave the way for gender reassignment. On the other hand, Hungary, for example, decided to prohibit LGBT marches last month. Russia is taking measures against LGBT propaganda. It is seen that the institutions in Europe, which have a predominantly sovereignist side, also take a stance against LGBT propaganda. How should we interpret this picture?
Europe and the countries of the European Union have followed a Christian culture for a long time. Traditions and family values are no longer observed there. This distances them from their God, and most importantly here is that they have such propaganda at the state level.
In Europe, there is also a dualistic approach to this issue, since the political leadership of the European Union of course supports LGBT propaganda. This is all madness, well, there is a deeply conservative society, there are few of them, but they still remain in Europe. For example, in Poland or in Hungary or in other Eastern European countries, such traditions are still observed, so to speak, being religious societies.
Well, for the most part, as I already said, the European political and financial elite, they fully support multiculturalism, the LGBT community. As they oppose everything traditional, Europe, of course, cannot be our ally because it is passing such a death sentence on itself.
As a result of such a policy, Europe has no future because in the form in which it historically existed, such as Western Christian culture, will no longer exist. There will be absolutely no family values if this continues and nothing good awaits them.
Family values and traditions
What are your suggestions for solutions? What kind of a policy do you think would be right for Georgia to follow?
I think I am sure that Georgia should conduct its sovereign independent policy which is based on our tradition based on family values on our church on our religion and in this case if we have such an independent from the Western political world. In this case it will be a successful policy, an independent sovereign policy, and in this case, it is salvation for Georgia as a small nation, for our culture and for our country.
And what is most interesting here is that we need allies of course and in this case our allies should be those countries that also share our values, for example Türkiye shares our values, meaning the leader of Türkiye and political, as it were, the majority of politicians support family values, a conservative traditional religious country. For example, Hungary also strongly supports Orbán, official Russia also declares this course, so there are many such countries and the leader of Iran and Azerbaijan and many, many, that is, we are also not alone in this field, so to speak.