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Loading ...Lithuania president slams anti-gay censorship bill
07.16.2009 4:00pm EDT
(Stockholm) Lithuania’s new president on Thursday criticized a censorship bill passed by lawmakers in the Baltic country that aims to keep information about homosexuality away from children.
Dalia Grybauskaite, who was inaugurated as president on Sunday, said the measure was poorly worded and vowed to propose amendments later this year.“I’m very much upset that such kind of laws in Lithuania are possible,” she told reporters during a joint news conference in Stockholm with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.
The measure bans publicly disseminating material deemed harmful to the mental health and “intellectual or moral development” of minors.
It lists 19 examples of “detrimental” information, including material that “agitates for homosexual, bisexual, and polygamous relations,” instructions on how to make explosives and graphic depictions of violence or death.
Lithuanian lawmakers this week overturned a veto by Grybauskaite’s predecessor, meaning the new president has to sign it into law.
“But I have a tool,” she said. “This tool is the possibility to come with a proposal for (an) amendment of the law.”
She did not give details of what changes she would propose but said the “human rights of all of society” would be important during her tenure as president.
Supporters said the measure was necessary to defend traditional family values in the former Soviet republic of 3.4 million people, which joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.
Critics said the text violated the freedom of speech and international standards of human rights. Gay rights activists called it homophobic.
Grybauskaite said it would be difficult to implement the legislation, which is set to take effect in March, because “it is unprecise and allows a lot of interpretation.”
Reinfeldt, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, said he had voiced his concerns about the bill with Grybauskaite during their meeting.
“Of course we’re disheartened by all signals that goes against our defense for human rights,” he said. “This transmits signals of a kind that you’re in some kind of way trying to portray homosexuality as something strange – and you shouldn’t do that in a modern society.”
Eastern Europe, gotta love it. They’ve been acting like this and worse for years, and for years, I’ve had a personal boycott against them for just as long.
For years, I have made a point not to buy ANYTHING that has “made in Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus etc…on it.”
It sucks too because I’m in A/V production and there is an excellent microphone/pro audio company which is based in America, but their products are made in the homophobic Baltic region.
The company is “BLUE” Mics. The name BLUE stands for “Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics”.
This sucks because they make some of the best (and pricey) mic cables I have used. I own some from before I knew what BLUE stood for. I also would love to own some of their high end mics!…
However, until these states learn to act like they are part of Europe and and not Alabama, I’ve forbidden myself from economically supporting the people and governments of this entire region!
This happened in England and Wales in 1988, then gay bashings, rise in hatred doubled, then in 1996 it tripled!!!!!
The law was finally repealed in 2004 and still in 2009 gay hatred and bashing have actually risen again because of the economy in a fucked state – remember Hitler in 1933, the same thing happened under paragragh 175. under paragragh 175, even fantazing about another man was a criminal offence.
See what happens when you leave the grandchildren of Nazi collaborators without supervision? They still haven’t learned the cost of their bigotry. Forget the Court of Human Rights–I’m thinking of certain Baltic states with suddenly weakened economies, which might find that there is NO EU money coming to bail them out unless they stop their bigoted stupidity now and on their own.
I don’t think that the EU will do anything, sadly.
Bama-stu : the most ironic part is that the European Court of Human Rights doesn’t depend from the European Union, but from the Council of Europe, which are 2 different organizations !
What makes you think the European Union will take any stance against this law? They didn’t do anything to help the LGBT citizens of Poland.
Only when someone in Eastern Europe takes their case to the European Court of Human Rights will anything happen – and knowing how some of the Eastern European countries are, they will ignore the decision anyway.
If this legislation takes effect in March I fully expect the European Union to declare that a serious and persistent violation of fundamental rights exists in Lithuania which is a member state. That would lead to the suspension of the rights of Lithuania in EU institutions pursuant to the Treaty of Nice, the current constitutional treaty of the EU.