“I am accused of having expressed my Christian position that homosexuality is a perversion,” P. Gražulis said during the session of the Seimas on Thursday.
The parliamentarian said that he retold passages from the Holy Scriptures, he claimed that he does not despise people belonging to sexual minorities, he only wants to help them.
“Today, young people are bullied from morning to night, all kinds of books are published, they are demanded to try whether a man and a man will like each other, children are redressed, this is how young people are harmed. If we were all homosexuals, this world wouldn’t exist, we can’t condemn, but we can’t promote sin, crimes, perversions either,” P. Gražulis said.
He also claimed in his statements, which led to the pre-trial investigation, that he reacted emotionally: “I said I want to lend a helping hand, I want to help, see a doctor.”
Conservative Rasa Petrauskienė, who advocated the destruction of untouchability, said that hate speech cannot be tolerated even at the domestic level.
“Listen to what he says and repeats in this process – he is spreading hate speech, and we have many examples where tolerance for seemingly small things, hate speech at the domestic level, it is this insensitivity that causes one of the biggest disasters in the country. That root lies in the little things, without these talks and jokes, there would be less hatred,” said R. Petrauskienė.
For his part, Mr. Gražulis himself on Thursday registered a project of impeachment against the representative of the Freedom Party in parliament Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius, raising the question of whether he broke the oath of the Seimas member by organizing a protest action during which he burned three books describing homosexual relationships.
This is how TVRaskevičius expressed his protest on Tuesday after the Seimas rejected the Government’s proposal to abandon the ban on promoting the LGBTIQ family concept. Mr. Gražulis’ initiative did not receive support – only he signed the project.
After consideration of the draft resolution on the abolition of immunity, the Seimas did not vote, the final vote on the adoption of the resolution will be held next week.
Prosecutor General Nida Grunskienė applied to the Seimas a couple of weeks ago with a request to cancel the immunity of P. Gražulis, the representative of the Mixed Group of Seimas members, so that he could be charged with public mockery and contempt of a group of people because of their sexual orientation.
The Seimas commission that examined this request, consisting of the ruling party and a representative of the opposition social democrats, proposes to grant the request. Other opposition factions did not delegate representatives to the commission, saying that they see a political undertone in the request to revoke Mr. Gražulis’ immunity, the politician himself calls the process a political confrontation.
At least 71 members of the Seimas must vote for the resolution on the legal immunity of the parliamentarian to be repealed.
The prosecutor’s office started the investigation after Mr. Gražulis’ statements in the Seimas corridor on May 26 last year.
After the Seimas approved the civil union bill, legalizing same-sex partnerships, P. Gražulis, after leaving the plenary meeting hall in the Seimas, met several representatives of the LGBTIQ community and cursed them, called them degenerates spreading venereal diseases, and offered them treatment.
The Criminal Code stipulates that anyone who publicly mocked, insulted, incited hatred or incited to discriminate against a group of people or a person belonging to it because of age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, race, skin color, nationality, language, origin, ethnic origin, social status , faith, beliefs or views, may be punished by a fine, restriction of liberty, arrest or deprivation of liberty for up to two years.
According to the Constitution, without the consent of the Seimas, a member of the Seimas cannot be prosecuted, arrested, or his freedom restricted in any other way.
For the second time in this term, the Prosecutor General has requested to revoke the legal immunity of P. Gražulis, MP of the Mixed Group of Seimas Members.
It was revoked in December 2020 to allow the politician to be charged with abuse in the Judex dumpling case. The Supreme Court of Lithuania (LAT) on Tuesday upheld the indictment of Petrus Gražulis, a member of the Seimas convicted of abuse, in a final decision.
According to law enforcement, using his status as a member of the Seimas, Mr. Gražulis helped manage the problems of the frozen food company Judex when Russian officials found listeria bacteria in the company’s products in 2015.
For this, the Court of Appeal of Lithuania awarded the politician more than 15 thousand last June. EUR fine and ordered to confiscate over 3.3 thousand. euros.
In addition, Mr. Gražulis was charged for intentionally voting for another member of the Seimas.
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2024-08-28 03:46:11
