TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — The speaker of the Georgian parliament signed into a law Thursday a bill that severely curtails LGBTQ+ rights in the country and mirrors legislation adopted in neighboring Russia.
Shalva Papuashvili, the parliament speaker, said on social media that the legislation does “not reflect current, temporary, changing ideas and ideologies, but is based on common sense, historical experience and centuries-old Christian, Georgian and European values.”
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili had refused to sign the bill and returned it to parliament on Wednesday. It was introduced by the governing Georgian Dream party and approved by lawmakers last month.
The bill includes bans on same-sex marriages, adoptions by same-sex couples and public endorsement and depictions of LGBTQ+ relations and people in the media. It also bans gender-affirming care and changing gender designations in official documents.
"This law protects the rights of all citizens, including freedom of expression, so that the rights of others are not violated, which is the essence and idea of true democracy,” Papuashvili wrote.
Parliament gave the legislation its final approval as Georgia, a largely conservative country where the Orthodox Church wields significant influence, prepares to vote in a parliamentary election. The law has been widely seen as an effort by the governing party to shore up support among conservative groups. It was decried by human rights advocates and LGBTQ+ activists, who said it further marginalized an already vulnerable community.
By signing the law, Georgian Dream “have taken homophobia to a new level, and that is political and institutional homophobia,” said Ana Tavadze, an activist with Tbilisi Pride, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
Georgian Dream's aim is to “fabricate” problems ahead of the election to distract people from “their failure” to solve issues involving unemployment, education and healthcare, Tavadze told The Associated Press.
The law has drawn comparisons with Russia, where the Kremlin has been highlighting what it calls traditional family values. Russian authorities in the last decade have banned public endorsement of “nontraditional sexual relations” and introduced laws against gender-affirming care, among other measures. Its Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism by labeling what the authorities called the LGBTQ+ “movement” operating in Russia as an extremist organization and banning it.
In Georgia, the LGBTQ+ community has struggled even before the legislation was introduced. Demonstrations and violent outbursts against LGBTQ+ people have been common, and last year hundreds of opponents of gay rights stormed an LGBTQ+ festival in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, forcing the event’s cancellation. This year, tens of thousands marched in Tbilisi to promote “traditional family values.”
A day after parliament gave its final approval to the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, transgender actor and model Kesaria Avramidze was stabbed to death in her apartment in Tbilisi. Rights advocates had worried that the bill would stoke more violence.
Papuashvili, the parliament speaker, said that by not signing the bill, President Zourabichvili and the Georgian opposition “did not have enough courage to openly express their opinion regarding this law.”
Some analysts say parts of the Georgian opposition are walking a fine line ahead of the Oct. 26 election between condemning the move to curtail LGBTQ+ rights and not wanting to alienate some voters.
Zourabichvili has long been at odds with the governing party and vetoed a “foreign influence” law adopted by parliament earlier this year. She was overridden by parliament, where Georgian Dream dominates.
The measure requires media and nongovernmental organizations to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power” if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad. It ignited weeks of protests and was widely criticized as threatening democratic freedoms. Those opposing the law compared it to similar legislation in Russia which is routinely used to suppress dissent, and accused the governing party of acting in concert with Moscow, jeopardizing Georgia’s chances of joining the European Union.
The South Caucasus nation of 3.7 million formally applied to join the EU in 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but the bloc halted its accession in response to the “foreign influence” law and froze some of its financial support. The United States imposed sanctions on dozens of Georgian officials in response to the law.
Georgian Dream was set up by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia and served briefly as Georgia’s prime minister in 2012. It promised to restore civil rights and “reset” relations with Moscow, which fought a brief war with Georgia in 2008 over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia then recognized the independence of South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian province, Abkhazia, and established military bases there.
Many Georgians backed Ukraine as Kyiv battled Russia’s invasion in 2022. But the Georgian government abstained from joining sanctions against Moscow, barred dozens of Kremlin critics from entering the country, and accused the West of trying to drag Georgia into open conflict with Russia. The opposition has accused the governing party of steering the country into Russia’s orbit to the detriment of its European aspirations.
FILE - Georgian far right parties and their supporters hold a banner that reads: "No to LGBT darkness," in front of the parliament during a rally against Pride Week in Tbilisi, Georgia, on July 2, 2022. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov, File)
A portrait of Kesaria Abramidze, a transgender actor and model who was stabbed to death, is displayed at a vigil near parliament in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Sophiko Megrelidze)
FILE - A Georgian Orthodox Church clergyman attends a celebration of the Day of Family Purity in the conservative country where animosity toward LGBTQ+ people is strong, in Tbilisi, Georgia, on May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Zurab Tsertsvadze, File)
HORSESHOE BEACH, Fla. (AP) — It was just a month ago that Brooke Hiers left the state-issued emergency trailer where her family had lived since Hurricane Idalia slammed into her Gulf Coast fishing village of Horseshoe Beach in August 2023.
Hiers and her husband Clint were still finishing the electrical work in the home they painstakingly rebuilt themselves, wiping out Clint’s savings to do so. They never will finish that wiring job.
Hurricane Helene blew their newly renovated home off its four foot-high pilings, sending it floating into the neighbor’s yard next door.
“You always think, ‘Oh, there’s no way it can happen again’,” Hiers said. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever experienced this in the history of hurricanes.”
For the third time in 13 months, this windswept stretch of Florida’s Big Bend took a direct hit from a hurricane — a one-two-three punch to a 50-mile (80-kilometer) sliver of the state’s more than 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometers) of coastline, first by Idalia, then Category 1 Hurricane Debby in August 2024 and now Helene.
Hiers, who sits on Horseshoe Beach’s town council, said words like “unbelievable” are beginning to lose their meaning.
“I’ve tried to use them all. Catastrophic. Devastating. Heartbreaking … none of that explains what happened here,” Hiers said.
The back-to-back hits to Florida’s Big Bend are forcing residents to reckon with the true costs of living in an area under siege by storms that researchers say are becoming stronger because of climate change.
The Hiers, like many others here, can’t afford homeowner’s insurance on their flood-prone houses, even if it was available. Residents who have watched their life savings get washed away multiple times are left with few choices — leave the communities where their families have lived for generations, pay tens of thousands of dollars to rebuild their houses on stilts as building codes require, or move into a recreational vehicle they can drive out of harm’s way.
That’s if they can afford any of those things. The storm left many residents bunking with family or friends, sleeping in their cars, or sheltering in what’s left of their collapsing homes.
Janalea England wasn't waiting for outside organizations to get aid to her friends and neighbors, turning her commercial fish market in the river town of Steinhatchee into a pop-up donation distribution center, just like she did after Hurricane Idalia. A row of folding tables was stacked with water, canned food, diapers, soap, clothes and shoes, a steady stream of residents coming and going.
“I’ve never seen so many people homeless as what I have right now. Not in my community,” England said. “They have nowhere to go.”
The sparsely populated Big Bend is known for its towering pine forests and pristine salt marshes that disappear into the horizon, a remote stretch of largely undeveloped coastline that’s mostly dodged the crush of condos, golf courses and souvenir strip malls that has carved up so much of the Sunshine State.
This is a place where teachers, mill workers and housekeepers could still afford to live within walking distance of the Gulf’s white sand beaches. Or at least they used to, until a third successive hurricane blew their homes apart.
Helene was so destructive, many residents don’t have a home left to clean up, escaping the storm with little more than the clothes on their backs, even losing their shoes to the surging tides.
“People didn’t even have a Christmas ornament to pick up or a plate from their kitchen,” Hiers said. “It was just gone.”
In a place where people are trying to get away from what they see as government interference, England, who organized her own donation site, isn’t putting her faith in government agencies and insurance companies.
“FEMA didn’t do much,” she said. “They lost everything with Idalia and they were told, ‘here, you can have a loan.’ I mean, where’s our tax money going then?”
England’s sister, Lorraine Davis, got a letter in the mail just days before Helene hit declaring that her insurance company was dropping her, with no explanation other than her home “fails to meet underwriting”.
Living on a fixed income, Davis has no idea how she’ll repair the long cracks that opened up in the ceiling of her trailer after the last storm.
“We'll all be on our own,” England said. “We're used to it.”
In the surreal aftermath of this third hurricane, some residents don’t have the strength to clean up their homes again, not with other storms still brewing in the Gulf.
With marinas washed away, restaurants collapsed and vacation homes blown apart, many commercial fishermen, servers and housecleaners lost their homes and their jobs on the same day.
Those who worked at the local sawmill and paper mill, two bedrock employers in the area, were laid off in the past year too. Now a convoy of semi-trucks full of hurricane relief supplies have set up camp at the shuttered mill in the city of Perry.
Hud Lilliott was a mill worker for 28 years, before losing his job and now his canal-front home in Dekle Beach, just down the street from the house where he grew up.
Lilliott and his wife Laurie hope to rebuild their house there, but they don’t know how they’ll pay for it. And they’re worried the school in Steinhatchee where Laurie teaches first grade could become another casualty of the storm, as the county watches its tax base float away.
“We've worked our whole lives and we're so close to where they say the ‘golden years’," Laurie said. "It's like you can see the light and it all goes dark.”
Dave Beamer rebuilt his home in Steinhatchee after it was “totaled” by Hurricane Idalia, only to see it washed into the marsh a year later.
“I don’t think I can do that again,” Beamer said. “Everybody’s changing their mind about how we’re going to live here.”
A waterlogged clock in a shed nearby shows the moment when time stopped, marking before Helene and after.
Beamer plans to stay in this river town, but put his home on wheels — buying a camper and building a pole barn to park it under.
In Horseshoe Beach, Hiers is waiting for a makeshift town hall to be delivered in the coming days, a double-wide trailer where they’ll offer what services they can for as long as they can. She and her husband are staying with their daughter, a 45-minute drive away.
“You feel like this could be the end of things as you knew it. Of your town. Of your community,” Hiers said. “We just don't even know how to recover at this point.”
Hiers said she and her husband will probably buy an RV and park it where their home once stood. But they won't be moving back to Horseshoe Beach for good until this year's storms are done.
They can't bear to do this again.
Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Maddie Kelley shows the high-water line left behind by Hurricane Helene on a seashell windchime at her family's home in Steinhatchee, Fla., Saturday, Sept. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
The sun sets over the storm-damaged Steinhatchee marina near where the Steinhatchee River flows into the Gulf of Mexico, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helen. (AP Photo/Kate Payne) Kate Payne Reporter, State Government Education Tallahassee, FL C 850.545.4283 kpayne@ap.or
The sun sets over a flooded road and a collapsed building in Steinhatchee, Fla., Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. (AP Photo/Kate Payne
Dave Beamer walks past the partially destroyed trailer he's been living in, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2024, in Steinhatchee, Fla., after Hurricane Helene washed his home into a marsh. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Dave Beamer surveys debris left behind by Hurricane Helene along his street in Steinhatchee, Fla., Sunday. Sept. 29, 2024. Beamer had just rebuilt his home in the wake of Hurricane Idalia in August 2023, before Helene washed it into a marsh. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Brooke Hiers surveys the damage done to her home, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Hiers and her husband rebuilt the home in the wake of Hurricane Idalia, which washed ashore in August, 2023, only to see it destroyed by another storm 13 months later. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Brooke Hiers stands in front of where her home used to sit in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. She and her husband had just rebuilt the home after Hurricane Idalia hit in August, 2023, before Hurricane Helene blew the house off its pilings and floated it into the neighbor's yard next door. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
A waterlogged clock hangs a shed, Sunday, Sept 29, 2024, in Steinhatchee, Fla., in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Leslie and J.D. High hold photos they found in the debris that Hurricane Helene left near their home in Dekle Beach in rural Taylor County, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024. Among the photos was a polaroid showing damage from a storm known as the "Storm of the Century" that hit the area in March, 1993. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
Laurie Lilliott stands amid the wreckage of her destroyed home in Dekle Beach in rural Taylor County, Fla., Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. (AP Photo/Kate Payne)
