Other events in Baltic States

Lithuanian lawmakers Tuesday passed a law banning what they dubbed the promotion of homosexuality, sparking an angry reaction from gay rights groups in the Baltic state, informs AFP/LETA.

Sixty-seven members of parliament voted in favour of the new legislation on the protection of minors. Three voted against and four abstained.

The law bars the public dissemination of information favorable to homosexuality on the grounds that it could harm the mental health and physical, intellectual and moral development of youngsters.

Vladimir Simonko, president of Lithuanian Gay League, slammed the move.  "Institutionalised homophobia is being set in stone," he said.

The legislation – which also applies to bisexuality and polygamy – does not specifically define public dissemination, nor does it set down the punishment for anyone who breaks it.

Lithuanian gay rights campaigners said they planned to ask the country's president not to sign the law, a step that is necessary for it to be implemented. Homosexuality is frowned upon by many people in Lithuania, where the vast majority of the population of 3.4 million is Roman Catholic. In 2007 and 2008, municipal authorities in the capital Vilnius and Lithuania's second city of Kaunas banned events that were part of a European Union-sponsored anti-discrimination campaign.

Those bans, as well as refusals to allow local campaigners to hold several public events, led to criticism from human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Gay rights campaigners from Lithuania and neighbouring Latvia and Estonia are nonetheless planning to hold a high-profile "gay pride" march in Vilnius next May.

This year's edition of the annual event was held in the Latvian capital Riga and passed off peacefully under a heavy police presence designed to keep apart marchers and anti-gay demonstrators who had attacked previous rallies.