Georgia’s parliament passed a package of anti-LGBTQ laws on Sept. 17 in its third reading. The bills will still need to be signed by pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili to become law — but a veto by the president can still be overcome by a subsequent vote in parliament.
The package of laws, based around a core bill entitled “On Protection of Family Values and Minors,” was first proposed in March by Mamuka Mdinaradze, the leader of the ruling Georgian Dream party’s faction in parliament.
It mirrors similar moves in Russia, particularly a decision by Russia’s Supreme Court in November 2023 to declare “the international LGBT social movement” to be “an extremist organization” and ban all its activities.
The bills would ban gender transition, adoption by same-sex couples, and forbid gatherings or the distribution of information “aimed at promoting” LGBTQ relationships.
After the law was initially proposed, Mdinaradze said it was necessary to “protect society from pseudo-liberal ideology and its inevitable harmful consequences.”
Ahead of its passage, a group of 32 civil society organizations released a statement condemning the legislation, saying that it was aimed at “manipulating the public before the elections, covering up real problems, inciting irrational fear, and creating another obstacle on the road to the country’s European integration.”
The bills do nothing to address real problems faced by families in Georgia, such as poverty, inflation, and inadequate access to education, the statement said.
The statement further called on President Zourabichvili to veto the legislation.
It was the latest in a pattern of government measures that aim to restrict the rights of LGBTQ people in Georgia.
The previous year, police in Tbilisi failed to prevent thousands of far-right counterprotesters from descending on the capital’s pride festival, resulting in fights and the cancellation of the event.
The attack on the pride festival was organized in part by the ar-right and pro-Russian group Alt-Info. Two key members of Alt-Info were sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses on Sept. 16.
