The European Parliament is urging Lithuania's Parliament to reject proposed plans to criminalise the ‘promotion of homosexual relations’ with a fine of up to €2,900.
During the debates at the European Parliament, both the members of the European Parliament and Viviane Reding, the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, expressed concerns with the proposed legislation and stated that the adoption of such a law would contradicts one of the basic fundamental principles of the European Union – freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
Already for the last couple of years, Lithuania was in a subject of intense scrutiny by the European institutions and international human rights organisations.
Indeed, the currently proposed legislation is not the first attempt to institutionalise discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation and limit freedom of expression and information on subjects related to homo- and bisexuality.Evelyne Paradis, Executive Director of ILGA-Europe, said: “We welcome today’s resolution by the European Parliament. This is already the second resolution of the European Parliament since 2009 condemning discriminatory legislative initiatives in Lithuania. It clearly demonstrates and confirms a very basic principle of the European Union that the discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation is unacceptable.
For more on this story - PinkPaper.com
2 comments:
Good for the European Parliament.
In the past the European Court of Justice (a different body, of course) repeatedly found against the UK on matters of more general Civil Liberties and forced it to amend nasty bits of legislation - like judicial corporal punishment for boys and young men, for example, which was inflicted for a wide range of offences at different times - including acts of sodomy between men (as then termed).
Its great to see how things change and move forward.
There are many reasons to dislike the European Parliament, but there are also increasingly many reasons to cheer it.
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