Homo Post-Sovieticus

Reality made an unwelcome intrusion into one of Georgia's leading reality-television shows recently, when 20-year-old youth was asked to leave the series after he announced on air that he was homosexual. The director of the channel which screens the show said the lad didn’t fit in with the ‘positive’ image they wanted to portray. The excellent website Eurasianet has the details here.

This is the second 'gay scandal' over the past few months in Georgia - a strongly religious and socially conservative society. The first started when rumours spread that an event here in Tbilisi promoting 'tolerance and inter-cultural dialogue' was actually going to be a Gay Pride parade. “Pederasts are Getting Ready for a Parade in Tbilisi,” proclaimed the headline in one local rag. The organisers then cancelled the event because, they said, they feared participants could be attacked if it went ahead. This was the piece I wrote about it for The Moscow Times:

It was the campest thing I’d seen on television in quite a while. A Georgian boy band composed of four young hunks in camouflage uniforms was preening and strutting its way through a cheesy disco stomp, intercut with footage of musclebound soldiers doing their stuff out on manoeuvres. It looked like the kind of act you might see wowing the Muscle Marys at one of Europe’s more tacky gay clubs.

But Georgia is a country where that kind of love still dares not speak its name, and where the closet remains home sweet home to any homosexual who values their personal safety. In Moscow, gays get beaten and busted if they attempt to show some pride. In Tbilisi, they haven’t even dared to try it. A few weeks ago, wild and unsubstantiated rumours spread about ‘sexual minorities’ participating in a city parade. Cue moral outrage, and the appearance of the Georgian Orthodox Patriarch to advise that any such ‘procession’ would be ‘unacceptable’, and might even cause riots.

This being the Caucasus, where rumour is a valued currency, scurrilous gossip about the sexual proclivities of top political figures circulates freely. But while tales of the nocturnal exploits of heterosexual politicians raise smiles, an open declaration of gayness would be career suicide. Literally, in one case, if the stories are true.

A few months back, I met some courageous youths who had set up Georgia’s first gay-rights group. They were wary about revealing their full names, and I won’t repeat them here.

“Violence is everyday thing if a person is visible as a homosexual,” one of them told me. “The response when people come out as gay to family members is usually negative, including being kicked out of the house, being locked up in a room, or being taken to psychiatrists.

“There is kind of a gay scene, but there is no regular place. It’s only a community of maybe 150-200 people who are ‘out’. But it’s not stable. If a place becomes known to be gay-friendly, homophobic people come in and try to stop it.”

Afterwards, I went out onto the street to ask people what they thought about this new organisation for Georgian homosexuals. Surprisingly, most of the women I spoke to thought it was wonderful - although I quickly realised that they actually had no idea what I was talking about. “It’s good there is an organisation that will enable them to get help,” said one middle-aged shopper. “Maybe they can be cured of this sickness.”

The men were somewhat less forgiving. “It goes against God’s law,” went one response. “I think it would be better if they were dead.”