Kazakhstan: Kazakh gay activists are petitioning local lawmakers do away with the gay propaganda law and other discriminatory statutes in Kazakhstan even as many politicians have ratcheted up their homophobic stance by calling for blood tests to determine and single out people as gay.
A group of social activists from Almaty, the country’s largest city has already petitioned lawmakers in Kazakhstan to work out amendments to certain laws in order that the gay “propaganda” legislation be banned along with strictures to prohibit gay people from working at public offices or serving in the Kazakh army, according to the Tengrinews news service.
The activists also want changes into the new “Marriage and Family Code” of the country that legislators are now developing to deprive gay people the right to adopt children in Kazakhstan.
Politicians say Kazakh society needs such amendments since over 100 stories mentioning LGBT representatives have “seeped” into the country’s media over the past two years as well as the open discussion of the issues related to LGBT community.
Dauren Babamuratov, leader from the nationalist “Future” or “Bolashak” movement even went so far as to call for “blood tests for degeneratism” to identify gay people and that he believes it is super easy to recognize a gay person by their DNA.
“We have stooped so low that LGBTs no more hide their orientation,” Babamuratov stated, declaring he could identify gay people simply because they wore colored trousers.
Kazakhstan, a country the size of Western Europe, but with a population of only 17 million has begun to imitate neighboring Russia’s anti-gay stance after it recently passed a bill banning “homosexual propaganda,” meaning no one can talk to minors about the mere existence of gay people or hold pride parades and rallies
Journalist and activist Zhanar Sekerbayeva reports that there have been no professional-gay rallies or pride parades in Kazakhstan.
Same-sex relations were decriminalized in the 1990s in Kazakhstan but many lawmakers in the Muslim-majority country openly advocate anti-gay discrimination saying that same-sex relations damages the image of their country and its domestic policy.
Source – Gay Asia News
