Georgia’s president sends anti-LGBTQ+ bill back to parliament – but it could still become law

Georgia’s president Salome Zourabichvili has sent the country’s anti-LGBTQ+ bill back to parliament rather than signing it – but it could still become law.

On Wednesday (2 October), Zourabichvili returned the LGBT Propaganda bill to parliament following it being passed by lawmakers on 17 September. 

Despite Zourabichvili’s failure to sign the bill means the parliamentary speaker now has five days to sign it into law. 

The bill, introduced by the ruling party Georgian Dream, would give authorities the legal right to ban Pride events and flags. It also seeks to ban gender-affirming care, LGBTQ+ people’s right to adopt and nullify same-sex marriages performed on Georgian territory.

It mirrors Russia’s so-called LGBT ‘propaganda’ law, adopted more than a decade ago, which bans public displays of LGBTQ+ flags or identities, as well as depictions of queer people in the media.

Tamara Jakeli, the director of Tbilisi Pride, previously described the bill as “the most terrible thing to happen to the LGBT community in Georgia”.

Zourabichvili has been a vocal opponent of the legislation and the Georgian Dream Party, the country’s ruling political party.

She previously vetoed the “foreign influence” law but was overridden by the parliament. 

The bill would require media and nongovernmental organisations to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from abroad. 

In September, a trans woman was killed in the former Soviet republic of Georgia just hours after the country’s parliament approved the wide-ranging anti-LGBTQ+ bill.

Model and Instagram influencer Kesaria Abramidze was found dead, with a number of stab wounds, at her home in the Didi Dighomi district of the capital, Tbilisi, the Ministry of Internal Affairs said on 18 September. 

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