Opinion | Georgia’s queerphobic laws are a clear step towards authoritarianism

Following in well-established authoritarian footsteps, Georgia’s introduction of anti-queer laws are set to have dire consequences for the country’s democracy. 

In June 2024, Georgia’s ruling party introduced a package of anti-queer laws, passing the bill in its first of three parliamentary readings. 

The package prohibits gay marriage, gender transition, and queer adoption, as well as ‘LGBT propaganda’, the latter an onerously vague term.  

[Read more: Explainer | What’s in Georgia’s new anti-queer bill?]

And it’s clear that the package is part of a broader trend: the ruling Georgian Dream party has been aping the moves of a number of countries that have turned towards authoritarianism in recent decades. Most clearly, the party has been following Russia’s example, with its introduction of both the anti-queer law and the foreign agent law, the latter following months of mass street protests. 

While the queerphobic legislative package has been broadly dismissed as of relevance only to queer people, it should be of concern to all not only because of its direct effects on the country’s queer community, but because of the laws’ broader significance: a clear bellwether for an authoritarian turn, and another instrument in the toolkit of a country increasingly determined to oppress all those they consider a threat. 

A move to entrench power

Homophobia is a well-established political tool for the current ruling party, with Georgian Dream mobilising anti-queer sentiment for over a decade to both establish a scapegoat and create a hot topic issue on which to criticise the West. 

The ruling party’s deliberate mobilisation of queer rights to create controversy is evident in the new legal package, which is in large parts redundant — the new laws restate and intensify bans on gay marriage, child adoption, and legal gender recognition, rallying people against threats that have already been legislated against. 

But the new initiatives go further than previous moves, seeking to erase queer people from Georgian public life entirely. The ban on ‘LGBT propaganda’ will censor media and educational institutions, making mention of anything queer a punishable offence, while also banning any public assembly believed to advocate for queer rights. 

The move is not an isolated one. Since the beginning of 2023, a protester has been detained and fined for holding a blank sign, people have been banned from protesting mining that has made their village not only unlivable, but life-threatening, and participants in the foreign agent protests reported being beaten both by police, and by groups of unidentified men.

Seeing the ‘queer propaganda’ law as something that only affects queer people is a grave mistake. It is part of a broader crackdown on basic public freedoms, with those who speak out against established power structures seen as a threat to be eliminated. And the establishment and entrenching of authoritarianism reliably follows such a path — those who are seen as ‘other’ are the first to be clamped down on, before the constraints start to be applied to broader society. 

This is evident in the way that pro-government media has framed both queer issues and anti-government protesters. Both are presented as ‘non-Georgian’, driven by external forces and malign Western powers, and so different to ordinary Georgians. 

But even before the scope of those targeted is widened, such laws are vague enough that they can — and, most likely, will — lead to restrictions on a wide range of information and demonstrations, including those that are not directly associated with the queer community. They will become a tool to censor education, public discourse, and media, and banish those who counter government narratives from public space. 

The law is also a clear signal regarding the country’s international political alignment, making evident that the ruling party seeks to distance itself from the West, and align itself with authoritarian nations. 

The choice of target by the government is a very considered one: it is no secret that homophobia is significantly prevalent in Georgia, notwithstanding progress in attitudes in recent years. How much this is attributable to the government’s promotion of queerphobic narratives is unclear, but a combination of religious and cultural factors make it a hate that can be easily encouraged. 

And the pushback is limited at best: queer rights are severely limited in Georgia, with only a handful of organisations providing legal, medical, and social support services to queer people. Queer events and performances, particularly those organised by Tbilisi Pride, have been violently disrupted, often by groups rallied by right-wing and religious groups, while the government has declared ‘family purity day’, on the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia, a public holiday. 

[Read more: A new wave of queer Georgian film under threat]

Unfortunately, progressive groups in civil society have responded to the current landscape by treating queer rights as secondary and isolated; something that can be sacrificed for ‘the greater good’. Many civil society and activist groups maintain a deliberate silence on the matter, afraid of becoming tarred with the ‘Western agenda’, ‘non-Georgian’ brush. 

But the foreign agent law should have made clear at this point — abandoning one group to government oppression will not save the others. Even if you are not queer, you will still be deemed a Western-funded agent of immorality, on whatever basis and under whatever label the ruling party sees fit to choose. Lawyers, journalists, activists, civil society groups, politicians, teenagers — all have been targeted by the government and government-associated media in recent months. 

Allowing one set of basic human rights to be erased is a dangerous move, paving the way for the government to further expand its reach. 

Together with the foreign agent or ‘Russian’ law, the anti-queer bills create a firm basis for authoritarianism in Georgia. Georgian Dream has made clear its choice of Russian-style antidemocratic and anti-human rights governance. As the October elections approach, it’s now up to Georgians to choose: between democracy and authoritarianism.