A working group created by President Dalia Grybauskaitė plans to propose that the Seimas should remove the discriminating provisions from the proposed Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information, which was condemned on an international scale. Besides that, experts believe that such a law is not needed at all.

The section of this bill that prohibits the propagation of homosexual, bisexual, and polygamous relations received strong condemnation from defenders of human rights and various European politicians and should be replaced with a non-discriminating wording. Having completed its work, the working group proposed that a ban on the promotion of underage sexual relationships, without reference to sexual orientation, should be incorporated in the law. Some other sections of the law also call for correction.

Yesterday Solveiga Cirtautienė, the leader of the working group and adviser to the president for legal matters, noted in an interview with LŽ that the discriminating provisions must be removed from the bill. “Words such as ‘propagation’ and ‛homosexual relations’ are not used. Other ambiguous, unclear, or extremely broad provisions are also being corrected. Such provisions should not appear in the bill”, she said.

According to Ms Cirtautienė, it will be proposed that the classification of sexual relationships by their nature should be eliminated from the bill. “The encouragement of Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius to protect minors from showing or propagating sexual relationships was taken into account to a certain extent. This sense is too broad, however. Following this provision, films about love between two people should also be prohibited. This is a person’s private life, and the state should interfere in it as little as possible”, Ms Cirtautienė said.

The attention of the members of the working group was also drawn to the prohibition against publishing information that encourages the denigration of familial relationships and demeans the importance of family. “Because the definition is too vague, the phrase ‘encourages the denigration’ will be removed. Only the word ‘demeans’ is left”, the adviser to the president explained.

The amendments prepared by the working group concerning the prohibited information will have two paragraphs related to sexual life left: one will prohibit the promotion of sexual yearning and the other will prohibit the promotion of sexual relationships between minors. “In certain cases, when information of an erotic nature is not connected with sexual relationships, problems may arise”, Ms Cirtautienė stated.

According to the adviser to the president, if a separate law protecting minors from information about a ‘sinful life’ were adopted in Lithuania, it would be the only such law in the EU. A similar legal act was adopted only in Georgia. “In other countries, the protection of minors is regulated by laws on public information in a broader sense. It is just impossible to foresee all cases: eventually, one would have to face obvious restrictions on human rights and freedom of expression and violations of the rights of minors to a private life”, Ms Cirtautienė noted.

Therefore, in her opinion, such a law is not needed in Lithuania at all. “Our analysis shows that it could cause more harm than good. For the meantime, we have made the first step towards cancellation of obviously discriminating provisions. Later, we should think about getting rid of this bill and defining the protection of minors in other ways”, Ms Cirtautienė said.

Valentinas Stundys, the chairman of the Seimas Committee on Education, Science and Culture, which prepared the bill, which was originally supposed to enter into force in March next year, acknowledged that this document would have to be amended by the parliament. “I really cannot say what the present attitude of the Seimas is. But by assessing the response of EU organisations and the resolution of the European Parliament (EP), the members of the Seimas should understand that the law will inevitably have to be amended. Otherwise Lithuania might have problems”, he told LŽ.

The proposed Law on the Protection of Minors against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information was not only condemned by non-governmental organisations such as Amnesty International, but also by the EP. A couple of weeks ago, the EP adopted a resolution encouraging Lithuania to revise this bill.

The working group that will propose amendments to the Seimas, is, besides Ms Cirtautienė, composed of famous lawyers such as Edita Žiobienė, Gediminas Mesonis, and Vytautas Mizaras and Dainius Pūras, a child psychiatrist and member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.