Georgia’s LGBT Community Faces Stark Choices

Levan, a 38-year-old transgender man, began transitioning four years ago and is currently undergoing hormone therapy. He has grown a beard and is satisfied with the results.

On September 17, the Georgian parliament voted through a law that significantly restricts the rights of LGBTI individuals. That same day, Levan posted on social media that he urgently needed to find more money and was starting work as a courier to save up for a ticket to Europe. He told IWPR that he planned to leave Georgia at the end of this month, after the October 26 elections.

"I never thought I would have to leave the country so suddenly and under such pressure,” he continued. “If the law comes into effect, I will have to abandon four years of hard work, which will have a bad effect on my mental health."

Daniel Merebashvili, a 24-year-old transgender man, has already left. He said that there had been seven other transgender individuals on the flight he took out of Georgia a month ago, all of whom planned to seek asylum in Europe.

Merebashvili, now living in a European country he asked not be identified, said that he was not yet ready to permanently leave his homeland.

“I am not seeking asylum, despite the fact that staying in Georgia was no longer safe for me,” he continued. “I haven't completely lost hope—I want to believe that at the end of October, my country will make a choice that allows me to return.”

Georgia’s upcoming parliamentary elections are being widely viewed as a referendum on the country’s future direction: whether it will move forward towards Euro-Atlantic integration or return to Russia’s sphere of influence.

The ruling Georgian Dream party (GD), led by its honourary chairman and top candidate oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili, has made support for supposedly “traditional values” a keystone of its policy.

Having already passed legislation impacting on civil society and independent media earlier this year, the law on the Protection of Family Values and Minors risks having a devastating impact on the country’s LGBT community.

Following the law’s enactment, marriage will only be permissible if it is a union between a biological woman and a biological man, with any other relationships recognised or registered abroad having no legal standing in Georgia. LGBTI individuals will be prohibited from adopting children, while gender-affirming procedures will be banned. Gender identity on ID documents will have to match biological sex.

The law also restricts freedom of expression; if enforced, public gatherings and demonstrations will be banned if they promote “assigning a gender different from one's biological sex, same-sex relationships, or incest”.

Activists warned that the law was discriminatory and homophobic, both in content and form, with the impact already being felt in people’s lives.

“Everyone in the community is feeling crushed,” said activist Paata Sabelashvili. “Many queer people have left, and many others are waiting for the election results while preparing to leave. When the ruling party and the wealthiest person in the country [Ivanishvili] portrays you as a symbol of moral decay and frames the stripping of your rights as a matter of national pride, it obviously leaves you feeling vulnerable.”

The legislation also undermined the health rights of Georgia's LGBTI community, he continued.

“This law essentially halts educational efforts on HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other infections, even as HIV prevalence among [gay] men and the trans community stands at a staggering 25 per cent.”

Beka Gabadadze, a social worker and activist with the community organisation Temida, stressed that the law would plunge the trans community into crisis.

"Life-saving gender affirmation procedures are being banned for trans people of all ages,” he continued. “The law states that if a doctor performs or facilitates such ‘medical manipulations,’ they will face criminal charges and up to four years in prison. For trans people, these medical procedures are the way to reduce gender dysphoria. Essentially, the government has declared the trans community to be criminals.”

The anti-LGBT law has also faced strong criticism from Georgia's Western allies, with Joseph Borrell, EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, warning that it “undermines fundamental human rights and increases discrimination and stigmatisation… [and] further distances the country from the European Union”.

Many see the GD government trying to mimic the Kremlin’s repressive tactics, noting how the so-called Foreign Agents Law, passed by the Georgian parliament in May, emulated similar Russian legislation. The new rule mandates that all NGOs that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from international sources register as entities serving foreign interests.

The anti-LGBT law also bears clear similarities to legislation signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2013 that purported to protect minors from “propaganda on non-traditional sexual relations”.

The CK SOS organisation, which supports LGBTI communities in the South Caucasus, wrote in a statement that "the ruling party of Georgia practically translated into Georgian all the homophobic laws adopted in Russia in the last ten years”.

Tamar Jakeli, the director of Tbilisi Pride, emphasised that it effectively nullified all Georgia’s progress towards equality.

“The law prohibits the community from speaking publicly about their issues, bans public appearances, and prevents transgender individuals from accessing medical procedures that are essential for their lives and mental health."

Eka Chitanava, director of the Tolerance and Diversity Institute, argued that so-called family values were being manipulated by the government to distract from the real issues affecting Georgians, such as poverty, rising emigration, inadequate healthcare and poor education.

“This is political homophobia," Chitanava continued. "An ideologically bankrupt government is trying to invent an enemy to scare the public with this fictitious threat.”

Chitanava warned that the law had also served to make the LGBTI community a target for violence. During public discussions of the draft law, held across many regions of Georgia, discriminatory language including terms like “deviants,” “disease,” and “sick” - was frequently used to describe LGBTI individuals.

On September 18, 2024, just one day after the law was passed, Kesaria Abramidze, a prominent transgender woman and media figure, was stabbed to death in her Tbilisi home.

Activists and experts believe that the government’s promotion of political homophobia may have contributed to her killing.

Beka Gabadadze, a social worker at Temida, an organisation that tracks incidents of hate, harassment, and discrimination against the LGBTI community, said that they had seen a sharp rise in hate crimes following the adoption of the law.

“From September 1 to 17, we registered three such crimes. But from September 18, when the law was passed, to September 30, the number soared to 16,” Gabadadze explained, noting that most of the incidents targeted transgender women.

“In every case, the attackers cited the homophobic law,” Gabadadze said. “One of the attackers threatened, ‘Wait until the law is fully enforced, and no one will stop us from killing you.’”

Locations Georgia

Topics LGBTI, Elections, Human rights