site.btaSocialists to Ask Parliament for Referendum on Keeping Gender Ideology out of Schools

An initiative committee has collected 208,269 signatures on a petition for holding a referendum against "gender ideology at schools", it transpired at a news conference at the National Assembly here on Wednesday.

In the referendum, citizens will be asked whether they support a prohibition on the instruction, upbringing and propaganda related to sex change and to concepts of a gender other than male and female among children and pupils in Bulgaria's educational system.

The signatures were collected within three months "with the active assistance of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP)," initiative committee co-chair Vladimir Sheitanov told the news conference, quoted by BSP in a press release.

"The signatures collected make it possible to table the matter at a plenary sitting, and at that sitting the National Assembly will pass a resolution scheduling a referendum," said BSP leader Korneliya Ninova. She assured the media that the Socialists will lobby the Bulgarian MPs to back the holding of a referendum. "What matters more is how many people will vote in that referendum and how they will vote. I am convinced that most of them will say 'no' to gender ideology at schools and kindergartens," Ninova pointed out.

Under the Direct Citizen Participation in State and Local Government Act, a minimum of 200,000 signatures of citizens who are eligible voters must be collected in order to approach Parliament with a proposal for holding a national referendum. The signatures will have to be validated by the Directorate General for Citizens' Registration and Administrative Services with the Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works.

Interviewed on Bulgarian National Radio earlier on Wednesday, Sheitanov explained that gender ideology disseminated in kindergartens and schools impairs children's physical and mental health. "Such children have no future," the lawyer argued. In his opinion, children should not be instructed about gender equality at such an early age. "We would like to call attention to the premature sexualization of children at an age at which they are unable to understand such information. We want to warn parents that sex change will cripple their children, that the mental ramifications of a sex change at age 5 to 7 may lead to critical conditions."

He sees a very direct link between gender ideology in the educational system and the demographic collapse in Bulgaria.

The lawyer insisted that one of the worst risks facing Bulgarian children now is their confusion at an age of physical, mental and moral immaturity. Children and adolescents perceive quite uncritically the precepts about neutrality of biological sex and the existence of genders other than male and female, and this leads to serious mental deviations in children's development, Sheitanov pointed out.

He explained that the initiative committee will exhaust all options under Bulgarian law, after which they will approach international institutions.