TBILISI, DFWatch–Georgian Dream is in the process of preparing a legislative initiative to “protect society from pseudo-liberal ideology” and its inevitable harmful consequences.” The country may face such a situation when “we will be asked to legalize the so-called civil partnership”, says Mamuka Mdinaradze, majority leader at the parliament.

Opposition political parties dub this as empty threat and Russian propaganda.

Mamuka Mdinaradze, one of the closest allies of the PM Irakli Kobakhidze, unveiled the initiative at the briefing after the majority meeting on Thursday. According to him, the draft law will be prepared in the next two weeks and submitted to parliament.

As Mdinaradze noted while talking about the need for the initiative, despite the fact that in 2017, the Constitution of Georgia recorded that marriage is a union between a man and a woman for the purpose of creating a family, “we may face the reality when we are asked to legalize the so-called civil partnership”.

“Wilful propaganda of non-traditional lifestyle” is what it is the responsibility of the Georgian society to fight against, he said.

“We see severe trends in the spread of pseudo-liberal ideology worldwide. This propaganda is taking more and more crude forms and, most importantly, it has serious consequences. International studies confirm that in a number of countries, where pseudo-liberal ideology is especially actively spread, the number of people with non-traditional sexual orientation among 18-25-year-olds is already about 20 percent, and in some places even more. It is worrying that this indicator has increased three times in seven years, and the increase coincides exactly with the period when this propaganda was particularly active,” Mdinaradze says.

“We may face the reality when we are asked to legalize the so-called civil partnership. We have already had such a case when there was a demand from foreigners to introduce the terminology recognizing other genders besides female and male and we had to go through quite a serious struggle to reject it. Today pseudo-liberals in the world march against such terms as ‘mother’ and ‘father’, ‘wife’ and ‘husband’, etc. They ask to introduce the so-called ‘gender neutral’ terminology such as ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’, etc. The logical continuation of this would be, for example, to remove the gender record from the passport.

“Every year in Georgia they try to thrust down our throat the so-called “Pride”, whereas sociological studies confirm that more than 90 percent of the population perceives it, quite rightly, as propaganda and is against holding Pride. Moreover, such aggressive propaganda, on the contrary, has a negative effect on the protection of the rights of people of different sexual orientation.

“[…]  thus, the parliamentary majority believes that we should actively oppose this propaganda and should also use legislative mechanisms for this. Accordingly, we’ve decided to prepare a legislative initiative that will protect society from pseudo-liberal ideology and its inevitable harmful consequences. The draft law will be prepared and initiated in the parliament in the next two weeks. The draft will fully respect the principles and norms stipulated by the second chapter of the Constitution of Georgia,” Mdinaradze said.

“The Act on the Protection of Georgia is to be adopted, not this vague bill, against empty threats”, said Ana Natsvilishvili, MP of opposition party Lelo.

“The main task of these people is that instead of what the country needs, what the citizens of the country need: law, justice, protection of dignity by law, security, rights, protection of the country from Russian expansion, they come out and start doing things that serve to sideline the real problems and threats. It won’t work,” Natsvlishvili said to Palitranews.

“Georgian Dream is now looking for topics that will bring them votes. In my opinion, this rhetoric is related to the PR campaign, and the opposition should act accordingly – do not allow ‘Dream’ to use this issue for the election and turn it into a successful PR,” Vakhtang Dzabiradze, a political analyst and former Soviet dissident, said to Rezonansi newspaper..

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