Bad news, reported via the BBC:
MPs overturned a presidential veto of the child-protection law, which critics say could institutionalise homophobia.
The legislation would ban the public dissemination of information considered harmful to minors.
This covers material on homosexuality, bisexuality and polygamy, as well as depictions of violence and death.
What can you say? It's a bad day for civil rights in Lithuania. I'm not sure what kind of in-depth analysis you can say about it. They're not as progressive? That they, much like neighboring Poland, is stuck in something of a post-Communist Catholic-backlash? That they at least don't have SS veterans parading the streets like neighboring Latvia?
I've no direct Baltic connections, but I'm half-Swedish. At the risk of sounding imperialist, the Swedish part of me feels betrayed. (Speaking to my Swedish mother, she feels pretty much the same) Swedes are friends of the Baltic states, Estonia and Latvia (then Livonia) were once part of Sweden. The Swedes were sympathetic to the plight of the Balitc states during their period of forced integration into the Soviet Union. They strongly supported their struggle for independence in 1989-1990. I was in Sweden then and I recall helping out in an aid effort for the Baltic states. No countries fought harder to get the Baltic states into the EU than Sweden and Finland. And Sweden is still the largest source of foreign aid and investment in the Baltic states.
In my mother's words: So why are they going off and listening to Italy [read:The Vatican] instead? [of progressive Sweden]
I hope Sweden and other EU countries will condemn this. After all the effort expended on bringing them into modern Europe, they shouldn't stand idly by while they plunge back into the bigotry of the past. It may well be overturned by the European Court, depending on the free-speech consequences.
Sweden just legalized gay marriage two months ago with the support of 6 out of 7 parties, representing about 95% of the vote. (a case of politicians being more progressive than the actual electorate! Support for same-sex marriage was strong, but not 95%) And so Latvia takes a step back.
50 years ago when abortion was illegal in Sweden (except for rape, etc), Swedish women travelled to communist Poland for abortions. Today, Polish women travel to Sweden for the same reason.
Why can't Europe (or even the Baltic) move forward together?