Strasbourg, 02/07/2013 (Agence Europe) - “We have all come a long way”, said Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, French Minister for Women's Rights, who opened the debates at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on 27 June relating to the fight against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The French minister pointed out that, in 1949, at the time when the oldest of the pan-European institutions was created, “women depended on their husbands and homosexuals were sent to prison or psychiatric hospitals. The Council of Europe took us forward thanks to its very precise texts that activists were then able to use as a base”. Welcoming the “immense courage of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi- and trans-sexual) activists in Russia”, the minister called on the Duma to “reconsider”. Russia has “the right” to adopt a law preventing adoption by homoparental families, she also said, while adding that it must be aware of “how societies have evolved if it wishes to take its place in the wider global context”.
PACE took up the thread of this opening speech by adopting the directive on which debates focused. Based on the report drafted by Norwegian Socialist Hakon Haugli, the text calls on the Russian Federation to reject the law against the “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships among minors” and calls on the Ukrainian parliament not to pursue examination of the draft law on prohibition of “so-called homosexual propaganda”. These two initiatives had, moreover, already been the subject of official reactions from the PACE secretary general, Thorbjorn Jagland, who denounced, with regard to Russia, a text that, he says, clearly goes against some of the most fundamental principles of the European Convention on Human Rights, such as freedom of expression and freedom to meet. The majority, he said, do not have the right to adopt a law that is clearly discriminatory against minorities. Although public opinion may be in favour of that law, this does not justify legalisation of prejudice.
Voting by 54 to 21 and two abstentions, parliamentarians at the plenary session therefore upheld Jagland's argument by adopting a recommendation condemning laws that could make prejudice and hostility in society legitimate, while fuelling a climate of hatred against LGBTs.
The Parliamentary Assembly also called on the Lithuanian parliament not to pursue its scrutiny of the proposals aimed at establishing administrative penalties for so-called “public denigration of constitutional moral values and of constitutional fundamentals of family life”.
The Republic of Moldova is also in the sights of the resolution adopted by PACE members, who insist that decisions in justice that invalidated the legislation banning homosexual propaganda should be applied. Parliamentarians then called on member states to adopt measures prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the organisation of public campaigns against incitement to harassment or violence whatever the motive may be, as well as the setting in place of mechanisms for filing complaints or for supporting victims of homophobic violence. This vote was met with delight by Polish Socialist Robert Biedron for whom “a last wall” still exists in a “Europe of shame” divided between the countries where the cause of LGBTs is evolving and those where people are still discriminated against and hunted down. “Today, we have begun to knock that last wall down”, he said during the debates (our translation throughout). (VL/transl.jl)