As EU cities prepare to show their love of diversity in summer festivals, “political homophobia" is making a comeback in Georgia and closer to home.
The 2024 Gay Pride season has already begun in Vienna, with festivals also due in freewheeling Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome in the next three months, as well as in more conservative EU capitals, such as Athens, Budapest, and Warsaw.
Protection of LGBTIQ+ rights has historically fanned out east with EU enlargement, because Europe’s 1993 Copenhagen criteria for eligibility and its 2010 Lisbon Treaty forbid discrimination against minorities.
But there won’t be a Gay Pride in EU-candidate country Georgia this summer, where activists fear for their safety amid a homophobic backlash by an anti-Western ruler.
And behind the rainbow flags inside the EU, LGBTIQ+ activists also worry that European Parliament elections could see far-right MEPs set back their movement.
Mariam Kvaratskhelia, who co-organised Tbilisi Pride in 2023, said nowhere was safe after police let a far-right mob storm their event last year.
“It was a closed festival on private property out of town and even here we were attacked and people had to be evacuated,” she told EUobserver from Tbilisi on Wednesday (5 June).
“This year, for the first time, they [unknown agents] have come to my apartment building, where I live, and plastered photos and graffiti of me on several floors, saying I was a lesbian and a foreign agent,” she added.
The ruling Georgian Dream party of billionaire financier Bidzina Ivanishvili used to speak highly of LGBTIQ+ values and applied for EU membership in March 2022.
But it marked a break with the West on 3 June, when it signed into law a Russian-style purge on “foreign agents”, despite EU warnings this could halt its progress.
And it has now promised an anti-LGBTIQ+ purge that would disalign it still further from EU norms, in what Kvaratskhelia called “a new level” of “geopolitical" and "political homophobia”.
“Yesterday, they announced they’d amend some 18 laws, banning any kind of medical intervention to change sex, like hormone therapy, banning any LGBTQI content in education, on TV, in the arts, removing our right to free assembly. If the changes go through, any kind of public coming out could be criminalised as ‘pro-LGBTQI propaganda’. They’re trying to erase us from normal life,” she said.
“This isn’t just worse than Hungary. Sex-changes aren’t forbidden even in China and Iran,” Kvaratskhelia said.
The full purge was unlikely to go ahead before Georgian elections in October due to legal technicalities, she added.
But the climate was already so toxic that “thousands” of Georgians have fled to the EU, Kvaratskhelia said.
“I’m getting messages every day from people asking me to write supporting letters for asylum applications because of what’s going on here,” she said.
For Chaber, the head of Ilga-Europe, a pro-LGBTQI+ advocacy group in Brussels, it was time for the EU to "clearly communicate that advancing such regressive laws endangers Georgia's candidate status and contradicts the union's fundamental values".
For the EU foreign service: "Since the draft legislation is not publicly available yet, we are not able to comment on its substance".
“As an EU candidate country, Georgia is expected to align its laws with EU legislation. This process also includes the Copenhagen criteria, which specifically require adherence to principles of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights”, its spokesman added.
But for EU officials, who have monitored Russian propaganda, it came as no surprise Ivanishvili was now weaponising sexuality in his pro-Russia swerve.
“Anti-LGBTIQ narratives are standard and recurrent features in disinformation activities against the EU ... This is often connected to narratives about the decadent or decaying West,” the EU foreign service spokesman said.
And despite its principles, EU diplomacy is wary of playing into its enemies’ hands by reacting with sanctions or with strident pro-LGBTIQ+ rhetoric.
“The foreign agents law and now the anti-LGBTI law are designed to be red rags to EU media and intellectual elites,” an EU diplomat said.
"Let's not try to fight Moscow by promoting sexual minorities in this region [the South Caucasus] right now, there will be a better time for this later down the line," the diplomat added.
Meanwhile, as EU voters began to elect new MEPs on Thursday, Ilga-Europe’s Chaber warned that Georgia was just part of a wider culture war.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has presented himself as a defender of white and straight Europe in his propaganda.
And “it’s challenging to definitively state whether Putin's vision is winning or losing,” Chaber said.
There had been “substantial progress” on LGBTIQ+ rights in the EU in the past five years and surveys indicated “a significant portion of the population supports diversity and inclusion”, the Ilga-Europe chief said.
Anti-foreign agents law protests in Tbilisi had shown further cause for optimism, Chaber added.
But with rightwing populists polling to make gains in several EU countries in the June elections, Chaber also said “a far-right leaning European Parliament would pose significant challenges for advancing and protecting LGBTI rights” in future.
And “we observe a worrying trend of governments and politicians increasingly using hate speech”, Chaber added.
"This weaponisation of LGBTI rights for political gain contributes to social division and rising hate and violence," the human-rights activist said.
“The upcoming elections will be a crucial battleground for these [EU] values,” Chaber said.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.
Andrew Rettman is EUobserver's foreign editor, writing about foreign and security issues since 2005. He is Polish, but grew up in the UK, and lives in Brussels. He has also written for The Guardian, The Times of London, and Intelligence Online.