Most provisions of the legislation will enter into force on July 1.Continue reading
Three years after a similar decision by the Hungarian government, Bulgaria’s parliament approved an amendment to the education law that bans the dissemination of ideas related to the LGBTQ+ movement in schools. Human rights groups have condemned the move as discriminatory, reports Hlavné Správy.
The Bulgarian Revival party came up with the proposal for the changes. 159 MPs voted in favor of the amendment, 22 voted against and 12 abstained.
Balkan Insight wrote that while the support of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) was expected, the amendment unexpectedly passed with the support of pro-Western parties, including the center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB).
The legislation bans the “promotion, popularization and support of ideas and opinions related to non-traditional sexual orientation or to sexual identification other than biological” in schools.
According to Balkan Insight, the text does not directly mention sanctions and does not specify what “ideas and opinions” should be considered illegal, allowing for different interpretations.
MPs also passed a separate law defining “non-traditional sexual orientation” as “different from the generally accepted and established notions in Bulgarian legal tradition of emotional, romantic, sexual or sensual attraction between persons of the opposite sex”, AFP reported.
Furthermore, the Hungarian Child Protection Act also obliges media service providers not only to restrict access to pornographic and violent content to minors, as was the case under the previous legislation, but also to restrict to given periods of time the broadcasting of programs and advertisements that promote and depict sexual awareness, gender reassignment, and homosexuality.
Via Hlavné Správy, Balkan Insight; Featured image via Pexels