The Rights of sexual minorities
ENThe homophobia is the appearance of the intolerance manifesting in the fear of homosexual people and in the intolerance towards them. Sexual orientation is one of the main elements of person’s identity. Whereas discrimination based on the orientation could be understood as the rough interference into the private life of a person and violation of the principle of equal rights. Talking about the rights of sexual minorities it is important to note that these minorities do not attempt to gain some special rights or privileges. Simply through the fight against the discrimination of homosexual people it is sought to safeguard all the civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights for each person despite of his sexual orientation. The situation in Lithuania causes the concern as according to the data of the research carried by the Center of Gender Studies at Vilnius University the citizens of Lithuania are quite homophobic (in the scale justifying the homosexuality the Lithuanian respondents scored hardly 1.86 points out of the potential 10, whereas the most tolerant in Europe are the citizens of Holland – they scored 7.83 points). According to the data of the questionnaire interview carried in May 2005 61 % of the respondents would not like to live in neighboring with the homosexual people.The attention should be paid to the fact that the data of the sociologic surveys depending on the chosen methodology may significantly differ, for example, according to the data of the representative survey of the residents, carried in 2003 by “Vilmorus” the level of intolerance in Lithuania is lower as 22.7 % of the respondents would not like to have homosexual people as neighbors; 40.6 % of the respondents thought that it is never possible to justify the discrimination of homosexual people during the employment process (32.7 % of the respondents have been of the opinion that sometimes it is possible to justify this, whereas, 9.9 % of the respondents thought that it is always possible to justify this). On the other hand, of late years the positive changes are also noticed, especially in the fields of law, e. g. the new anti-discriminative provisions in the punitive as well as labor laws, expanded functions of the Ombudsman of Equal Opportunities. The Lithuanian Government, together with EU in 2005 will provide the support of more than 1 million litas for the fight against the hatred towards the sexual minorities, following the programme of the fight against the discrimination EQUAL (it is the first time when the Government allots the financial support for the financing of the projects for the sexual minorities) [p. 346-347].
