Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili signed the anti-LGBT bill into law on October 3 after President Salome Zurabishvili refused to sign the bill but did not veto it.
The Speaker, who co-authored the homophobic and transphobic bill, had five days to sign and publish the law after the president refused. The law will take effect 60 days after publication, more than a month after the crucial October 26 parliamentary elections.
Papuashvili wrote that while Georgian people pride themselves on tolerance, “tolerance means co-existence based on mutual respect, not living to spite the others and disturbing the public peace by ignoring others’ beliefs and values.” He argued, counterfactually, that “millions of people” manifested on May 17, 2024, in what he called a “de facto referendum on the law and thus considers “this the signature of the highest possible legitimacy, a signature that is endorsed by the nation and the clergy.”
“It is symbolic that the rootless and value-stripped nominal leader of the opposition, which the fading President has become, refuses to sign the law that protects the most valuable for a person – family and children,” Papuashvili said in a Facebook post, slamming President Zurabishvili. According to the Speaker, the refusal shows well where Zurabishvili and “rootless opposition” stand, adding that the latter “didn’t even have enough courage to openly express their opinion on this law and shamefully sneaked out of the room during the vote.”
Earlier, the President’s reluctance to veto the bill and send it back to Parliament with proposed amendments drew mixed reactions from activists. While some were unhappy with the decision, others attributed it to Zurabishvili’s calculation not to allow the ruling party to make homophobia a central issue in the days leading up to the elections through an emergency veto override session.
The ‘Law on the Protection of Family Values and Minors,’ adopted by the ruling Georgian Dream majority on September 17, includes a number of homophobic and transphobic measures, such as imposing censorship in media and educational institutions on queer-themed issues, banning gender reassignment surgery and legal procedures, and cracking down on freedom of expression and assembly.
The legislative package also bans same-sex marriage, even though it has never been legal in Georgia, prohibits the adoption of children by non-heterosexual couples or non-cisgender individuals, and equates same-sex relationships with ‘incest.’ The law is part of a wider hate-filled election campaign and rhetoric led by Georgian Dream.
Papuashvili said he expected criticism from “some foreign partners” for signing the law but insisted that Georgians have never been afraid of the assessments of others, “when we were bound by our faith, common sense and loyalty to the country, and when we saw that the civilizational currents were cutting a false riverbed.”
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