RIGHTS-ROMANIA: Homosexuals Fight For Their Rights

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Marian Chiriac

BUCHAREST, Oct 9 2000 (IPS) - Two years ago Florin Buhuceanu, 30, was studying Theology until he decided to come out of the closet and admit to being homosexual.

He lost some friends and received many abusive telephone calls but says that he has never regretted his decision.

Today, Buhuceanu runs “Accept”, the country’s only gay and lesbian rights movement.

“Our main aim is to convince public opinion that homosexual behaviour must become legal here. Romania is the only member of the State of Council of Europe which still denies rights for gays,” Buhuceanu said.

Addressing the International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA) pan-European conference, which ended at the weekend, Buhuceanu said Romania had failed to make the promised amendments to the Penal Code and to legalise homosexuality.

According to the present legislation, homosexual behaviour is punishable by a jail term of up to five years.

The local Ministry of Justice says nobody is currently serving a prison sentence in connection with homosexual acts. However, statistics from “Accept” say that 432 gays and lesbians were now in jail on charges related to the controversial article 200 of the Penal Code, which incriminates homosexuality.

“In our opinion, Romania has failed to reform its legal system in line with Western standards,” said Nigel Warner of ILGA.

“We will request the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to re-introduce the monitoring of Romania to ensure that it meets the human rights obligations that it has undertaken,” Warner added.

Romania, which began its European Union membership talks earlier this year, lags behind other ex-communist states which have already decriminalised homosexuality.

Up until December 1989, when the communist regime was overthrown, the situation faced by homosexuals was almost never made public.

In the early 1990s, local press and international organisations reported cases of people being jailed because of their different sexual orientation.

In 1994, the Constitutional Court suspended the communist-era legislation prohibiting homosexual acts and called for more liberal legislation to bring Romanian law in line with European norms.

Two years later the Romanian Parliament adopted a new law, which again made it a criminal offence to engage in homosexual acts – even in private – and outlawing membership of gay and lesbian movements.

The Council of Europe suspended monitoring of human rights in April 1997 after Romania made progress on democratic reforms. It also gave the country a year to improve its human rights record, particularly in the area of gay rights.

Still, in June, the lower Chamber of the Romanian Parliament scrapped legislation that discriminates against gays and criminalizes homosexual behaviour. Under the new legislation, homosexual acts are subject to punishment only if they are performed in public.

But the new version of the law has been criticised by legal experts and gay rights groups as being ambiguous. The revised law states, “perverted sexual acts, when conducted in public,” carry prison sentences of up to five years.

Perverted acts are defined as “any unnatural acts in connection with sexual life,” with no clear definition of “unnatural acts.”

The law still must be approved by the Senate, and then signed by the president before taking effect.

Although most Romanians say they sincerely want to become closer to the Western Europe values, they are still reluctant to allow the decriminalisation of homosexuality mainly due of their moral beliefs.

Romania’s Orthodox Church, to which almost 90 percent of Romanians belong, condemns homosexuality as a sin.

“We want to join Europe, not Sodom. We don’t want gays in jail, but they shouldn’t be allowed to spread their propaganda either,” Archbishop Bartolomeu Anania said in mid-September, during a gathering of country’s Orthodox Church leaders, called “The Holy Synod”.

“Everybody should know that homosexuality is a sin against the religion, family and social values, which are at the core of our Church,” Archbishop Anania added.

But there are also signs that the stranglehold of fear and prejudice is easing.

Romanian newspapers are beginning to write about homosexuals without the intolerance that characterized the early 1990s while there are some local discos and bars welcoming gays, offering security to the clientele.