"Sexual or other orientation" - Part 2
Part 1 is here. And now say with me, “Won't somebody please think of the children?”
Yes (to summarize for those who don’t have the patience to read such a long entry), our Mr. Municipal Councillor who started the whole mess doesn’t want his child, or anyone’s children in Pazardzhik Municipality to see a pride parade (just in case it occurs to somebody to organize one), but otherwise he claims that his creation, Article 14 of the Regulation on Public Order, doesn’t envisage gay people at all. It is also clear that he doesn’t know what exactly “sexual orientation” means, not to mention the now notorious “other orientation”. And he claims that “public demonstration is when you try to attract other people’s attention” - I guess this last one is a “clever” way of getting out of the mess he’s created. One of the gay activists, Marko Markov, advised him to read about sexual orientation in the highschool biology textbook. :)
Here are the videos of another TV show on 10 March that went much better than the one in my previous entry, Ivan and Andrey’s Show on Nova TV. As always, I’ve translated some choice segments.
Who is who, (your) left to right: Blago Petrov, the municipal councillor who proposed Article 14.
Marko Markov and Radoslav Stoyanov, LGBT activists
The hosts who only go under their first names, Ivan and Andrey (and I keep confusing them)
Click to viewVideo #1, at 1:49-2:13, after one of the hosts has said that Blago Petrov allegedly thought that the gays were giving “bad example” (not specifying to whom):
Radoslav Stoyanov, “What bad example is this; sexual orientation is not something you learn like a foreign language, you understand that, don’t you?”
Blago Petrov, “On the contrary, I’ve never said that they give bad example. On the contrary, I think that sexual orientation is a personal and deeply intimate problem…”
Marko Markov, [interrupting] If you have a problem with your sexual orientation, I don’t have one.”
Blago Petrov, [continuing] “… and it shouldn’t be expressed in public”.
At 9:29 to the end, after the hosts have pressed him to answer if he considers homosexuality “a deviation from the normal”:
Blago Petrov, “This is a sexual… how to say it... there is some… maybe doctors who practice this profession could answer you precisely, but I think that it’s a deviation, a sexual deviation.”
Video #2, more gems from Blago Petrov:
At 2:45, “They [the gays] ought to behave in society in a way that wouldn’t provoke the others.”
At 3:04, “I don’t want my child or the children in Pazardzhik Municipality to watch such events”.
Video #3, at 2:14-2:40
Blago Petrov [explaining why there shouldn’t be a pride parade in Pazardzhik], “Because this is abuse of a right, and the abuse of a right is prohibited by the Constitution.”
Radoslav Stoyanov, “How is it abuse, define the abuse. Which rights of others are violated?”
[a bit more of the same, back and forth]
Blago Petrov, “I’m asking you, with what do the people who don’t want to learn your sexual orientation violate your rights?” [He never explains what rights of “other people” get violated by a pride parade]
At 5:11 (footage of the protest at the Commission against Discrimination earlier in the day)
Giggly female reporter, “How do you feel about everybody watching you at the moment and learning that you are gays and lesbians? This is a very interesting question.”
Protesting girl, “Well, you just have to be human. It’s that simple.”
And here is the ultimate gem (italics mine, of course) in another TV show, “Hello, Bulgaria” on Nova TV again (sorry, this video is not embeddable). The man on the left is Dobromir Dobrev, (the other activist who filed the complaint against Article 14 together with Radoslav Stoyanov), and on the right we have our star Blago Petrov again.
Blago Petrov trying to explain what “other orientation” means:
At 00:00:51, “Every orientation that the executive authorities can judge that is not useful for the community we live in and for Pazardzhik Municipality, and can be prohibited or permitted by those who are authorized to decide that.”
At 00:01:36, “By ‘other orientation’ I mean every orientation which is unacceptable for the community we live in.”
Host, “For example?”
Blago Petrov, “For example it could be some deviation… I said about one deviation then [when the article was being voted], as sodomy that shouldn’t be…”
Other host, “But it’s also sexual, in a way!”
Blago Petrov, “But it wasn’t cited in the text.”