LGBT RIGHTS IN LITHUANIA - ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK?

Published on January 6, 2014

Story by

judith sinnige

Translation by:

Lewis Fairfax

Society

Lithuan­ian MP Pe­tras Gražulis proudly holds up a pair of jeans with a zip on the back­side. We are in his of­fice in the Seimas- Lithua­nia's par­lia­ment- dis­cussing the 55-year-old MP’s ha­tred of ho­mo­sex­u­als. Gražulis is the leader of the pop­ulist right-wing party ‘Order and Jus­tice’. He has had the jeans made spe­cially to show his dis­gust for ho­mo­sex­u­als. On 12 No­vem­ber he vis­ited the LGBT as­so­ci­a­tion in Vil­nius to show them off in per­son and to offer a pair as a gift. ‘I'm going to get them patented, I'll sell tonnes of them,’ he as­sures me, be­fore launch­ing into a long di­a­tribe backed up by an abun­dance of Bible quotes. He pro­poses ways of ‘cur­ing’ ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity, which he calls ‘a curse brought from the EU.’

Gražulis' ini­tia­tive would seem like noth­ing more than a joke in bad taste if it wasn’t so dis­tress­ingly symp­to­matic of the state of gay rights in Lithua­nia, a coun­try of 3.5 mil­lion peo­ple. ‘Every­one's heard about what he did,’ laments Vladimir Si­monko, pres­i­dent of the Lithuan­ian Gay League (LGL), 'but not a sin­gle politi­cian has con­demned it.’

35% of LITHUA­NI­ANS are against GAY POLITI­CIANS

There have been sev­eral stud­ies show­ing the ex­tent of Lithua­nia’s an­i­mos­ity to­wards ho­mo­sex­u­als. Only 52% of Lithua­ni­ans sup­port equal op­por­tu­ni­ties for gay peo­ple in the labour mar­ket, ac­cord­ing to a state om­buds­man's re­port. 42% of those asked said they would be scared if their child was taught by a gay teacher. A study by the Vi­enna-based Eu­ro­pean Union Agency for Fun­da­men­tal Rights showed that 61% of LGBTI (les­bian, gay, bi­sex­ual, trans­gen­der/tran­sex­ual, in­ter­sex) peo­ple in Lithua­nia had been dis­crim­i­nated against or ha­rassed - the high­est rate in the EU.

No fewer than five draft laws are being drawn up which could quite eas­ily be called ho­mo­pho­bic or anti-tran­sex­ual: bans on sex changes and gay adop­tion, crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of, ‘the defama­tion of con­sti­tu­tional eth­i­cal val­ues,’ (i.e. the idea that mar­riage is only be­tween a man and a woman), the re­moval of ‘ho­mo­pho­bic in­sults’ as an of­fence from the Penal Code, and the halt­ing of pub­lic fi­nan­cial sup­port for pub­lic protests (i.e. gay pride fes­ti­vals). What's more, sev­eral at­tempts have been made to en­shrine mar­riage in the Con­sti­tu­tion as an in­sti­tu­tion be­tween a man and a woman, as has been done in Croa­tia.

A TV ad for Baltic Pride was re­jected by pub­lic broad­cast­ers a few months ago due to an amend­ment to child pro­tec­tion law which came into force in 2010 and which for­bids ‘pro­pa­ganda in favour of ho­mo­sex­ual, bi­sex­ual and polyg­a­mous re­la­tion­ships.’

The Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment voted to ap­prove a res­o­lu­tion against the amend­ment, but this had lit­tle ef­fect. The only way to get the ad shown is to tele­vise it after 11pm, with an ‘adult con­tent’ warn­ing pre­ced­ing it. As a re­sult, only one com­mer­cial chan­nel has ap­proved it for broad­cast dur­ing the day.  ‘It's like Rus­sia here,’ says Si­mo­nenko, re­fer­ring to the Russ­ian law for­bid­ding ‘ho­mo­sex­ual pro­pa­ganda.’ One human rights ac­tivist was re­cently im­pris­oned for break­ing this law.

"OUR POLITI­CIANS ARE THE PROB­LEM"

Aside from a few minor in­ci­dents nearby, and de­spite the failed at­tempts of the city's mayor to dis­tance the event from the city cen­tre, July's Baltic Pride was a suc­cess. ‘It feels like every time we take a step for­ward, we take two steps back,’ sighs Si­monko. ‘It's ac­tu­ally our politi­cians who are the prob­lem. They're con­vinced that most of our peo­ple are ho­mo­phobes and they act ac­cord­ingly. Ei­ther that, or they dare not come out in favour of ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity for fear of los­ing votes.’ Most peo­ple in the coun­try con­sider ho­mo­sex­u­al­ity as ei­ther an ill­ness or a per­ver­sion to be fought against, ac­cord­ing to an en­quiry car­ried out by MPs.

The lib­eral and so­cial de­mo­c­ra­tic par­ties have a few mem­bers in their ranks who are openly in favour of gay rights, but their num­ber can ap­par­ently ‘be counted on one hand.’ Apart from the lib­eral party cur­rently in op­po­si­tion, not a sin­gle party is cam­paign­ing for the in­tro­duc­tion of civil part­ner­ship for same-sex cou­ples. What's more, Lithua­nia is gov­erned by a grand coali­tion, led by Prime Min­is­ter Al­gir­das Butkevičius, com­pris­ing Order and Jus­tice, the So­cial De­mo­c­ra­tic Party, the Labour Party and the party of the Pol­ish mi­nor­ity, mean­ing that, ‘when it comes to gay rights, you can for­get it,’ says Si­mo­nenko.

How­ever, the so­cial de­moc­rats pos­sess a pow­er­ful human rights ac­tivist in 69-year-old pro­fes­sor and fem­i­nist Mar­ija Pavil­ion­ienė. She says that only four or five of her fel­low party mem­bers share her point of view. She finds Gražulis' jeans dis­gust­ing. ‘Like so many other ho­mo­phobes, he is ob­sessed with sex­u­al­ity. But it's not a ques­tion of sex, it's a ques­tion of human rights!’ Many so­cial de­moc­rats don't buy it, how­ever. ‘I feel a con­stant pres­sure to aban­don my pro­gres­sive ideas,’ she ad­mits dur­ing a meet­ing at a café in cen­tral Vil­nius. ‘I ar­gued with the min­is­ter of jus­tice, try­ing to bring in civil part­ner­ships,’ Pavil­ion­ienė ex­plains. ‘He promised me it would hap­pen, but I'm still wait­ing. The pro­posal's there wait­ing, it just has to be taken out of the drawer! But he's scared. Even the pres­i­dent, Gry­bauskaitė says that the time for civil part­ner­ships hasn't come yet. She wouldn't dare, but if she'd just say that sev­eral dif­fer­ent kinds of fam­ily life are pos­si­ble, that would greatly help our cause.’  For that mat­ter, ru­mours abound that Gry­bauskaitė, who is sup­ported by so­cial con­ser­v­a­tives, is her­self a les­bian.

Up until now only one Lithuan­ian politi­cian has come out as gay - Rokas Žilin­skas, 41, a for­mer jour­nal­ist and news pre­sen­ter, and serv­ing MP of the con­ser­v­a­tive ‘Pa­tri­otic Union’ party. ‘His party uses him to knock back gay rights,’ says Si­monko. ‘He was op­posed to Baltic Pride!  He be­lieves in silent protest and that ho­mo­pho­bia will just sort it­self out. He even sug­gested that I dis­band my or­gan­i­sa­tion.’

IN­TER­VIEWS CON­DUCTED BY JU­DITH SIN­NIGE IN VIL­NIUS.

Keep an eye out for the sec­ond part of the re­port which will con­cen­trate on the in­flu­ence of the media and of the church on gay rights in Lithua­nia.

Story by

judith sinnige

Translated from Droits des homosexuels en Lituanie : « Un pas en avant, deux en arrière »