Ruling party tables legislative package on “family values”, “protection of minors”

The parliamentary majority of the ruling Georgian Dream party on Tuesday tabled a legislative package on “family values” and “protection of minors”, with Parliament Speaker Shalva Papuashvili saying the initiative would amend the Civil Code, the Labour Code and legislation on education across the country.

In his remarks over the initiative, Papuashvili said one of the elements of the bill would follow the 2017 definition of marriage as a “union between a man and a woman for the purpose of creating a family” and bring about practical applications of the clause.

“It will be inadmissible to register an alternative union of marriage that contradicts the condition established by the Georgian legislation”, he said.

Papuashvili also said the new legislation would outlaw adoption of minors by persons who identify themselves “with a gender other than their own or who are not heterosexual”.

The legislation would also prohibit surgery or “any other type of manipulation” with the purpose of changing the gender of a person.

Media outlets will also be barred from broadcasting information “aimed at promoting attribution of a person to a gender different from their own, same-sex relationships or incest”, the lawmaker said.

“This prohibition applies only to the extent that it prevents broadcasting of scenes depicting intimate relations between representatives of the same sex or scenes of incest”, Papuashvili added.

The initiative also prohibits “production of LGBT propaganda” in educational institutions - in particular, dissemination of information “aimed at the promotion of a person's belonging to a different gender than their own, same-sex relationships or incest”.