LGBT rights in Yarova

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Yarova are some of the most advanced in Eastern Artemia and in the world. has been lawful in Yarova since 20 June 1962, when the Sodomy Law Revocation Act (Отмена анти-содомии закона) came into force upon the assent of President Eghian.

Yarova has frequently been referred to as one of the most gay-friendly countries in the world, with its largest cities featuring their own, and being named among the most gay-friendly cities in the world, as Chaykoboksarsk’s Belyymost neighbourhood, Cheskovsk’s Queer Village , Yumarapol’s Sayangorod and Shchyokhov’s Prokhor Street Queer Village. Since 1971, the Constitution of Yarova has guaranteed fundamental human rights to the LGBT community, as the Federal Declaration of Rights and Liberties (Федеральная декларация прав и свобод) which applies to all s, “shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the preservation and enhancement of the .” Every June and July, Yarova’s celebrates  in all major cities, with many political figures from the federal, oblast-level and municipal scenes.

A global survey conducted in May 2014 showed that up to 80% of Yarova’s general population (90% among Yarovars aged between 18 and 29 years) favoured of, which represented a staggering increase of 20% in  within just ten years. Thereafter, polls from June 2015 have shown an increase in the Yarovan population’s point of view, with a large majority of Yarovars supporting, which has been legally permitted since 2006, and therewith. The polls also show that 70% of Yarova’s population agree that “same-sex couples should have the same rights to adopt children as heterosexual couples do,” and 78% agreeing that “same-sex couples are just likely as other parents to successfully raise children.”

History
The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Yarova and its historical antecedents (the Vojiskiy Empire and Tsardom of Yarova) has largely been influenced by the political leanings of its rulers. Medieval Catholic-Protestant Western and Central Artemia had the largest influence on Yarovan attitudes towards homosexuality. Yarovan LGBT history was influenced by the ambivalent attitude of the Svogda Patriarchate Orthodox religiosity regarding sexuality.

In contrast to old Western and Central Artemia, ancient Yarova had an open attitude towards homosexuality. Homosexuality has been documented in Yarova for centuries. The earliest documented bans on homosexuality date to the early-mid 17th century. Yulian Susonev recorded during the reign of Tsar Yaroslav V, who began the process of the and modernisation of Yarova, that male homosexuals were put to death and also states that female homosexuals are also put to death by burning. Government attempts at preventing homosexual practices began in the 18th century, with Tsar Yaroslav VI prohibiting homosexual relations in the imperial armed forces in 1712 as a part of his efforts to modernise the country. In 1850, further laws were enacted criminalising certain sexual acts between two males, but an LGBT subculture developed in Yarovan cities during that century, with many significant Yarovars being openly homosexual or bisexual.

In 1926, the Second Civil War saw the overthrow of the Vojiskiy government and the subsequent foundation of the United Federated Districts, a moderate social democracy and republic. The old laws criminalising homosexuality were not carried by the Provisional Government, effectively legalising homosexual and transgender activity within Yarova, although it remained illegal in other former territories of the Vojiskiy Empire. Under the leadership of Vitaliy Simakin and Rusya Tarasovich, openly homosexual people were allowed to serve in government and the military. However, in 1931, the federal government under the leadership of Igor Biryu and the Christian Alliance Party recriminalised homosexual activity with punishments of up to ten years’ imprisonment. Following the successive Republican Party governments of Tarasovich, Yankovsky and Novoseltsev from 1936-1951, there was a gradual liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the United Federated Districts, but homosexual acts remained illegal. Nonetheless, same-sex relations were officially decriminalised with the Sodomy Law Revocation Act in 1962. Homosexual culture became increasingly visible thereafter, particularly following the end of the Khismatullin government and the inauguration of the brashly liberal president Vladimir Rodchenko in 1995.

According to several reports about the Tsardom of Yarova and Vojiskiy Empire, Western Artemian visitors were shocked or surprised how open and naturally the Yarovan people dealt with homosexuality. The Tiperyn royal diplomat Aike Drosse described in his report Notysjes oer Yarovyske Saken (Notes on Yarovan Affairs) his observations during his travels in Svogda and Chaykoboksarsk in 1534 and 1543. He noted that homosexuality was prevalent amongst all social classes, not exclusively the elite. The Thesparossian poet Perilokis Spinos, who visited Chaykoboksarsk in 1640 during the tumultuous reign of Tsar Yaroslav IV, was shocked not about the upheavals brought about by the Plantation of the Dzyunakaz, but about the open homosexuality of the Yarovan peasantry. There are also reports of homosexual relationships between women, dating back to the era of the East Slavic confederation of Ljudia. Historians widely agree that Tsar Yaroslav VI’s efforts to Artemianise Yarova heavily imported homophobia to the country.

Constitutional framework
The rights of LGBT Yarovars are now as thoroughly protected as those of other Yarovars largely due to several court rulings decided under Section 11 of the Federal Declaration of Rights and Liberties that was included in the Constitution of Yarova in 1968, with Section 11 coming into effect in 1971.

In 2019, within the framework of its constitutional principles, the United Federated Districts was a founding member and signatory of the Cheskovsk Protocol. The Cheskovsk Protocol is an international agreement which condemns violence against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity and legally binds signatories to utilise all law enforcement apparatus, when accessible and applicable, to prevent and desist such instances. Furthermore, the Federal Criminal Law Code explicitly prohibits hate propaganda, and discrimination in the workplace, in the provision of goods and services or in any other areas, including indirect discrimination.

President Grigorievna officially apologised to the Yarovan LGBT community on behalf of the federal government and United Federated Districts on 21 December 2016 – also commissioning an expungement scheme to remove any citizen’s conviction of homosexuality prior to the 1962 decriminalisation.

Recognition of same-sex relationships
Long before 2006, when the House of Representatives enacted a statutory law recognising on the federal level, same-sex relationships were already recognised by most federated districts, as some district-level administrative acts were already assigning the same rights and obligations to same-sex and opposite-sex couples living together, or de facto spouses in Chaykoboksarsk.

As early as 2000, the Chaykoboksarsk Manifesto on Civil Rights and Liberties was amended to provide same-sex couples with an all-encompassing solution, and the most extensive possible within district-level jurisdiction, insofar as it created then a status of civil unions that nowadays still allows for couples who choose to form such a union, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, to benefit from the same effects as those of marriage, “as regards the direction of the family, the exercise of parental authority, contribution towards expenses, the familial residence, the familial patrimony and the compensatory allowance.” Since then, in addition to being bound to share a community of life, and owing each other respect, fidelity, succour and assistance, civil union spouses have the same rights, duties and obligations as married couples, but unlike marriage, which was under federal jurisdiction, and by that time had to be awaited another three years before the House of Representatives act stating its definition came into force on account of same-sex couples, a civil union is valid only in the Free City of Chaykoboksarsk, and may not be recognised outside of its jurisdiction, or may be faced with “unprecedented problems.”

Between 2001 and 2005, courts in several oblasts and free cities ruled that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples constitutes a form of discrimination that is prohibited by Section 11 of the Federal Declaration of Rights and Liberties, and struck down the federal definition, requiring that those jurisdictions register same-sex marriages. The first ruling required the federal government to draft legislation recognising same-sex marriage, but later rulings brought the new definition into effect immediately in the jurisdictions concerned. Yarovan jurisdictions thereby became among the first in the world to allow same-sex marriage. By August 2005, same-sex marriages were legally recognised in the oblasts of Afonas’yevskiy, Khomustatskaya, Sof’yanka, Golitsyna, Leont’yevskaya, Otrada, Kamenka, Srednikovo and Kryzhelovschina, and the free cities of Chaykoboksarsk, Cheskovsk, Shchyokhov, Minerinsk-Belgorod, Kogalma, Yumarapol and Borisopol, encompassing just under 65% of Yarova’s population of roughly 100 million people.

The federal government announced in the late-summer of 2005 that it would not appeal the decisions, and would draft legislation to allow same-sex marriages across the country. The bill was put before the Supreme Court of Yarova to ensure that it would withstand a declaratory challenge by those who oppose same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court heard arguments on the draft legislation in November 2005, and in January 2006, declared the proposed definition of “marriage” as being consistent with respect to all matters referred to in the Federal Declaration of Rights and Liberties, and as falling within the exclusive legislative authority of the House of Representatives in Shchyokhov.

The bill was passed by the House of Representatives in April 2006 making Yarova the third country to legalise same-sex marriage nationwide, and the first to do so without a residency requirement.

One recent study by sociologist Lyonya Ramazanov suggests that between 1995 and 2002, Yarovan public opinion on legalising same-sex marriage underwent a dramatic shift: moving from minority support to majority support and that this support was the result of a significant shift in positive feelings towards gay and lesbian people.

Discrimination and harassment protections
On 8 June 1997, the Yarovan Rights of the Citizen Act, 1988 (Закон о правах граждан Яровый, 1988), or the ZPGY, was amended to include sexual orientation as a protected ground. The ZPGY guarantees the right to equality, equal opportunity, fair treatment and an environment free from discrimination in employment and the provision of goods, services, facilities or accommodation within federal jurisdiction. Relations between individual human beings falling within district-level jurisdiction, the ZPGY applies only to institution-based activities, or corporations, that falls within federal jurisdiction, namely, it forbids discrimination, and harassment, by, or from, federal departments, and agencies, banks, radio, and television stations, airlines, and ship-owners, towards their employees, or sections of the general public.

In 2012, DSP House Representative Radislav Bukov introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to explicitly add gender identity and expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination in the ZPGY. He reintroduced the bill in 2014. In May 2015, he introduced it a third time, with additional provisions to add gender identity and expression to the hate crimes provisions of the Federal Criminal Law Code. In February 2016, it passed third reading in the House of Representatives with support from all parties apart from the Yarovar Defence Front. In April 2016, the House of Representatives passed the bill and it received presidential assent a week later. The law went into effect immediately. The bill was approved in the House 459-51.

Conversion therapy
So-called “conversion therapy,” sometimes known as “reparative therapy” (Репаративная терапия), is a range of (sometimes abusive) practices that falsely claim to change, or to have power to change, a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Such practices have been rejected by every mainstream medical and mental health organisation, including the Yarovan Federal Centre of Psychology (Яровский федеральный центр психологии).

In 2009, the leading professional Association of Chaykoboksarsk Psychologists (Ассоциация Чайкобоксарских Психологов) reaffirmed “its position that homosexuality is not intrinsically a mental disorder,” and that it “staunchly opposes portrayals of sexual minority youths and adults as mentally ill due to their sexual orientation.” Furthermore, underlining that aversive therapies (or “conversion therapies”) are inappropriate, unethical, and inhumane, the association has advised the members of the profession across the United Federated Districts that psychotherapy, due to legal considerations, is all-indicated for the purpose of treating depression or anxiety, to relieve distress, to strengthen self-esteem, and to aid people in coping with the difficulties they may encounter and thus, to ensure their overall well-being, regardless of sexual orientation.

Additionally, in 2011, the Yarovan Sexological Organisation (Яровийская Сексологическая Организация) also issued a public notice reiterating the position of the Chaykoboksarsk psychologists, to inform the people about the risks of online, or phone, counselling, and that those practices are strictly forbidden by all professional organisations sanctioned by the district-level government of Chaykoboksarsk (including medicine and psychiatry), as it could have harmful effects on an individual’s mental health. Any complaints concerning aversive therapies, whether it be conducted by religious, professional or other practitioners, would be filed with either one of the organisations, and/or Chaykoboksarsk’s Human Rights Commission (Чайкобоксарская комиссия по правам человека) under the harassment clause, section 12.2 of the Chaykoboksarsk Manifesto on Civil Rights and Liberties, or under the psychological ill-treatment clause, section 23 of the district’s Youth Immunity of Harm Act, 2002 (Закон о защите молодежи, 2002). Chaykoboksarsk led the charge to criminalise aversive therapies across the United Federated Districts, with explicit legislation passed in numerous district assemblies.

On 14 May 2013, Sof’yankan Minister for Healthcare and Child Protection Nikodim Tsereteli announced measures to stop aversive therapies in Sof’yanka Oblast. Tsereteli said the oblast’s human rights legal code prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation – including how healthcare services are provided. Tsereteli, himself an open homosexual, also stated that “it is the position of the district government in Sof’yanka that so-called conversion therapy is absolutely abhorrent. Torture paid for by the taxpayer can have no place in the oblast’s public healthcare system.” After the therapy was made illegal in Chaykoboksarsk, Sof’yanka Oblast, Cheskovsk, Minerinsk-Belgorod, Afonas’yevskiy Oblast, Shchyokhov, and Otrada Oblast through the course of the early 2010s, a federal bill outlawing minors from receiving treatment across all jurisdictions was passed in the House of Representatives in 2017.

Intersex rights
activists in Yarova often cite the Federal Declaration of Rights and Liberties in legal challenges which they consider an infringement on intersex people’s rights to life, privacy, self-determination/personal autonomy regarding medical treatment and physical integrity/bodily autonomy. In a case brought to the Supreme Court of Yarova in 1996, the first federal legislation was passed which provided official legal recognition of intersex people and their rights. Parental/guardian consent was required before a physician could operate on the ambiguous genitalia of an intersex child born anywhere in the United Federated Districts. The court decision also ruled for the provision of potential financial reparations to adult intersex citizens who had their reproductive organs removed without their consent.

However, it was not until September 2012, when the House of Representatives finally delivered a landmark bill, the Sex Characteristics Act, 2012 (Закон о половых признаках, 2012), calling for an end to the so-called ‘normalisation surgeries’ and intersex genital mutilation (IGM) on infants and minors, without exception to parental/guardian consent. Yarova is among one of the few countries in the world to have legislated on this matter.

Blood donation
In 2018, the Minister for Healthcare and Child Protection Natasha Rzhevskaya stated in an interview to Seychas that the blood donation ban on (MSM) undermines LGBT equality and is not supported by any scientific evidence to indicate gay and bisexual men are more likely to have HIV than heterosexual counterparts. Rzhevskaya’s rhetoric was echoed by the Yarovan Federal Association of Blood Banks (Яровиийская Федерация Ассоциации банков крови) which urged the federal government to lift the ban and implement more thorough screening measures of all prospective donors, regardless of sexuality. In 2019, Rzhevskaya subsequently gained cross-cabinet approval to open up MSM blood donation without abstinence deferrals.

LGBT influence in Yarovan politics
In the House of Representatives, four parties support LGBT rights with varying degrees. The Democratic Socialists and Progressives, Ecology Party, People of Yarova, and Alternative Socialist Movement are the most vocal supporters of these rights. At its founding, the Christian Alliance Party was largely opposed to LGBT rights, although some members, typically former members of the now-defunct Democratic Centre Party, have supported LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage. Although the People of Yarova has been largely supportive of pro-LGBT legislation in the past twenty years, some of the party’s members have opposed expanding LGBT rights, and a former People of Yarova House representative was rebuked for calls to recriminalise homosexual activity. Since 2006, the People of Yarova has become a stronger advocate for LGBT rights in Yarova and overseas. In June 2015, People of Yarova delegates voted in favour of removing the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman from the party’s official policy document, effectively changing the party’s official position on same-sex marriage from opposed to neutral.

Although homosexuality was decriminalised in 1962, Yarovan society and politics remained widely hostile to the advancement of LGBT rights, particularly owing to opposition from the Svogda Patriarchate at that time. The Republican Party, along with the Christian Alliance Party, regarded homosexuality as immoral and even “un-Yarovan.” However, although still staunchly opposed to marriage equality, the Republican Party moderated its political standings on LGBT issues. In 1971, during the tenure of the now-disgraced President Belomest, the Federal Declaration of Rights and Liberties was amended to include equality based on grounds of sexual orientation. In 1973, Republican Party House Representative Ilik Girditsky is notable for having been the first House Representative to come out as gay in Yarova. During the administrations of President Christov and President Khismatullin, LGBT grassroots movements mobilised across the country and by 1995, the political tables had turned with the rise in support of the DSP.

In 1995, President Rodchenko became the first DSP president in the country’s history and, during his incumbency, a wave of pro-LGBT legislation was enacted – from the lifting of the LGBT military ban in the Federal Armed Forces of Yarova to the series of anti-discrimination laws. As of 2019, there are 28 members of the House of Representatives who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Furthermore, President Grigorievna identifies as bisexual and the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Karolina Schneider is transgender.