The Czech Republic recently passed a law granting watered-down civil unions for same-sex couples, while officials in the Russian Federation and Poland banned gay pride festivals. The state of rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Eastern Europe is changing – and not always for the better. (10-APR-06) 

Report by Index on Censorship´s M. Zapp.

It’s not legally marriage, and it’s certainly not equality. But the Czech Republic’s recent approval of a same-sex partnership registry with some benefits – overriding a presidential veto even – is a significant step for LGBT rights in Eastern Europe. Queer people can now register their partnership, gain access to partner’s health information and have some property inheritance rights. But they cannot adopt children, nor be legally married.

Although the thirteenth European country to grant rights to LGBT people, it is one of the only steps in advancing queer rights in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet States. Although many countries in Western Europe have passed legislation granting marriage and other human rights to LGBT people, rights are actually receding in countries like Poland, the Russian Federation and Latvia.

Gay march in Moscow under threat
In February, officials in Moscow said they would not even consider the application for what would be Russia’s first gay pride festival in May, saying that it will cause ‘outrage’ from citizens. Although laws banning homosexuality were overturned 13 years ago, homophobia is still rampant, with a 2005 poll stating that nearly 75 per cent of Russians oppose same-sex marriage and 43 per cent are in favour of prosecution for ‘homosexual relations.’ Chief Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin advocated outright flogging of gays in public and threatened that Russian Muslims would stage violent protests if the parade went ahead. Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Alexy II supported the parade ban, saying that it will ‘prevent public propaganda for immorality.’ But parade organiser Nikolai Alekseev promised that the parade would continue as planned, and that any government attempt to ban the parade was a criminal offence. Alekseev also said the he and the other organisers were considering taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Homosexuals labelled ´perverts´ by Polish president
The situation in Poland is even more dire than in the Russian Federation. President Lech Kaczynski called gay people ‘perverts’ and banned gay pride festivals while mayor of Warsaw. Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said that the government should ‘interfere’ if gays try to ‘infect’ others with their sexuality, although how he thinks the government should interfere is not clear. A civil rights group in Poland filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Right last December.

Anti-gay legislation
Like in many states in the United States, anti-gay legislation is being passed where the laws previously did not address queer rights. Latvia changed its constitution so it would only recognise opposite-sex marriage, and similar legislation is proposed in other countries, including Lithuania. But a few countries do grant a few bare-bones rights. In Croatia, same-sex couples who have lived together for three years or more are given the same rights as opposite-sex couples who have cohabitated for the same amount of time. A similar law exists in Hungary, where a sort of common-law marriage exists for either type of co-habiting couples. A very bare law that affords some property and inheritance rights to same-sex couples exists in Slovenia.

EU pressure to adopt gay rights
Thankfully, this discrimination and lack of equality has not gone unnoticed. Last October, an EU commission threatened that Poland could lose its EU voting rights because of its opposition to gay rights. (The country was also threatened with losing voting rights for a separate issue, as it sought to allow capital punishment.)  But no official action has yet been taken.
In January, members of the European Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution to actively fight homophobia in the European Union. The resolution calls on the European Commission to propose more anti-discriminatory legislation, to protect LGBT people from violence, and to ensure that same-sex partners receive the same protection as the rest of society. It also urges members to recognize that gay people were victims of the Nazis.

Call for full equality for LGBT people
Article 13 of the EU treaty already outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation, sex, race, ethnicity, age, religion and ability. But what the EU considers to be banning discrimination is apparently not the same as requiring equality. Although there have been outcries in the European Parliament against specific anti-gay legislation, there has been little talk of requiring full legal equality for LGBT people, including marriage. The general consensus seems to be that only most rudimentary queer rights are required for all member states of the EU, but that it is up to individual countries to decide the relative level of anti-homophobia legislation they will take. As more countries try to become members of the EU, human rights will undoubtedly be a factor in the decision to allow or not allow membership. But whether the EU recognises queer rights as human rights, and how important securing equality for all truly is, remains to be seen.