Full legal context
Georgia is the country on this site with an anti-discrimination law and a propaganda law at once. The first was passed in 2014, to meet a European visa requirement, and names sexual orientation and gender identity across employment, education, housing and services. The second was passed in 2024, is modelled closely on the Russian statute, and bans pride events, the rainbow flag and depictions of same-sex relationships in the media. Neither has been repealed. The Rainbow Map score of 11.88 % is what that contradiction looks like once it is scored: 23 % for equality, and next to nothing for everything the 2024 law touches.
Here is the historical overview of the legalisation of homosexuality and gay rights in Georgia.
Phase I: Decriminalisation and a Written Guarantee (2000 to 2014)
2000: Same-sex acts are decriminalised, as a condition of Council of Europe membership.
2006: The Labour Code prohibits discrimination in employment on grounds of sexual orientation.
2012: The criminal code is amended so that a motive of sexual orientation or gender identity is an aggravating circumstance for any offence.
2014: Parliament passes the Law on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination on 2 May, in force from 7 May, against the open opposition of the Orthodox Church. On paper it is one of the stronger instruments in the region, and it is still on the books.
Phase II: The Street Answers (2013 to 2023)
2013: On 17 May a rally of a few dozen people is stormed by a crowd of thousands led by Orthodox clergy. At least 28 people are injured and the buses carrying the participants away are attacked.
2021: Far-right groups attack the Tbilisi Pride march before it begins. 53 journalists are injured, one cameraman later dies, and the march is called off.
2023: A Pride festival at Lisi Lake is stormed by about two thousand people and abandoned.
The pattern in all three is the same. The state does not attack, and the state does not protect.
Phase III: The 2024 Law (2024)
2024: On 4 June the speaker of parliament introduces On Family Values and the Protection of Minors, a package amending eighteen laws. It passes its third reading 84 to 0 on 17 September in a vote boycotted by the opposition. President Zourabichvili refuses to sign it, and the speaker signs it into law on 3 October.
What it does: it bans gatherings and depictions that promote same-sex relationships or a gender identity other than the one recorded at birth, bans the rainbow flag in that context, bans gender-affirming surgery at any age, bans adoption by same-sex couples, and makes 17 May, the international day against homophobia, a state holiday called Family Sanctity Day.
2024: On 18 September, the day after the third reading, the trans model and actress Kesaria Abramidze is murdered in her flat in Tbilisi. The coincidence of the two dates was noted around the world, and that case is what most people outside the country now associate with the law.
Phase IV: Since (2025 to 2026)
The law has not produced a wave of prosecutions. What it has produced is silence in public and continuity in private. The queer parties that fill Bassiani and the bars around it carried on, and the first one after the signing was a joint night by four promoters at once.
