Pride Around the World
Legal and Social Context Lithuania, a small Baltic country with a population of three million, decriminalized same-sex relations in 1993, shortly after the Soviet Union dissolved. As a condition of joining the European Union in 2004, the country enacted various protections against discrimination, including based on sexual orientation (but not gender identity). The state does not legally recognize same-sex marriages or partnerships. ILGA Europe’s most recent Rainbow Europe Index ranks Lithuania at 35 out of 49 countries.187 In 2002, Lithuania adopted a Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information that restricted “public information having a detrimental effect on the mental health, physical, intellectual or moral development of minors.” In 2009, parliament adopted amendments to the law that would specifically censor content “whereby homosexual, bisexual or polygamous relations are promoted” and “whereby family relations are distorted, its values are scorned.”188 The president vetoed the amendments, but parliament overruled the veto. By this time, a newly elected president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, had taken office and the law returned to her desk for approval. She too, vetoed the amendment, but went on to approve a revised provision that no longer explicitly referred to same-sex relationships, but instead censored material that “expresses contempt for family values, [and] encourages the concept of entry into a marriage and creation of a family other than stipulated in the Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania and the Civil Code of the Republic of Lithuania.”189 The President insisted that the amendment did not discriminate against LGBT people, although unsurprisingly, it proved to be deployed in a discriminatory manner to restrict media coverage of a 2013 Pride event, discussed below.
187 ILGA Europe, “Rainbow Europe 2022,” https://www.ilga-europe.org/ rainboweurope/2022 (accessed 24 May 2022). 188 An official translation of the 2009 draft language is available here: Republic of Lithuania, Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information, 10 September 2002 – No IX-1067 (As last amended on 14 July 2009 – No XI-333), “Version from 1 March 2010,” art. 4(14, 15), https://outrightinternational.org/sites/default/ files/319-1.pdf (accessed 26 May 2022). 189 Eglė Kuktoraitė, “Protection of Minors, or Censorship of LGBT Content?” LGL, https:// www.lgl.lt/en/?p=20809 (accessed May 26, 2022). For the full text of the law, see: Republic of Lithuania, Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information, No IX-1067, https://e-seimas.lrs.lt/portal/legalAct/lt/TAD/TAIS.363137?jfwid.
LITHUANIA
Lithuania: “We Are Everywhere”
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