Archpriest Ilia Chighladze responds to the ongoing Pride Week and the planned March of Honor on social networks. He says that “violent homophobia must end once and for all in Georgia and everyone should be given the right to peaceful expression of thought and speech unless it’s prohibited by law and is not a criminal offence.”
Archpriest also talks about the freedom of expression of anti-Pride groups, that every group has the right to express their opinion, but he emphasizes its forms and compliance with the law – “every believer and traditionalist has the right to protest Pride and its ideas, but whatever we saw yesterday, has nothing to do with Christianity and spirituality; It is savagery and violation of the law.”
Ilia Chighladze focuses on a message often used by ultra-rightists and homophobic groups. They claim that with the influence of Pride a person’s sexual orientation might be changed and it might also affect children – “I also used to think like those xenophobe groups, believing that Pride events equaled the end of our country. However, today I realize that such approach is extremely primitive and pointless: peaceful forms of expression do not pose any threat to traditional values and Christianity; All groups have the legal right to preach and propagate unless a particular thing is prohibited by law. Christ spread his values by preaching and not by violence or repression of anyone. It is impossible for anyone to become homosexual because of Pride. Such narrative that “LGBT people make our children gay using Pride” is an extremely primitive mindset which only reveals its own moral cowardice and instability and insults its own and other children. No one can “turn our children gay” unless it is their personal desire and choice. Everyone should analyze and understand this. No one can physically force their children to be heterosexual either. You should also understand this and get out of the brainwashing influence of Putin’s ideologically marginalized political groups.
The Archpriest, along with legal responsibility of aggressive groups, focuses on the origin of their funding and considers it important to suspend these funding sources.
