A total of 7,038 signatures from citizens and 76 non-governmental organizations were submitted on Monday to the presidential administration with a request that President Rumen Radev veto the amendments to the Pre-school and School Education Act. The initiative is by The Wake Up Foundation and the Youth LGBT organization Deystvie.
The revisions, passed on both first and second reading on August 7, banned any "propaganda, popularization or instigation in any way whatsoever, whether directly or indirectly, in the educational system of any ideas and views related to non-traditional sexual orientation and/or gender identification otherwise than according to the biological sex".
"Non-traditional sexual orientation" is defined as "notions of emotional, romantic, sexual, sensual attraction of persons of opposite sexes that are different from such notions as commonly accepted and established in the Bulgarian legal tradition".
The adopted bill contradicts the Constitution and a number of international treaties to which Bulgaria is a party, Denitsa Lyubenova from the Youth LGBT organization Deystvie told journalists. She said her organisation has notified the European institutions.
The organization's legal team is taking advice on what actions can be taken if a veto is not imposed - one of them is a referral to the Constitutional Court, but also the nullity of the law itself, because it contradicts fundamental human values that are enshrined in the Constitution, Lyubenova said.
The end of the 50th National Assembly is eagerly awaited because a number of MPs are doing a populist election campaign, she said. In her words, cheap populism should be stopped in its bud because this is a test to Bulgarian society how far its limits go to oppose.
/RY/
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