{"id":275010,"date":"2016-10-06T19:10:04","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T15:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=275010"},"modified":"2016-10-06T21:08:20","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T17:08:20","slug":"discussion-of-new-armenian-law-on-ngos-ends-with-republican-mps-homophobic-rants-and-%e2%80%98jokes%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2016\/10\/06\/discussion-of-new-armenian-law-on-ngos-ends-with-republican-mps-homophobic-rants-and-%e2%80%98jokes%e2%80%99.html","title":{"rendered":"Discussion of New Armenian Law on NGOs Ends with Republican MPs&#8217; Homophobic Rants and \u2018Jokes\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<em>The discussion of the new Armenian law &ldquo;On Public Organizations&rdquo; at the National Assembly today ended with homophobic comments from lawmakers representing the ruling Republican Party of Armenia&#39;s (RPA) faction.&nbsp;<\/em>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tIntroducing the bill to the MPs, Justice Minister Arpine Hovhannisyan noted that when drawing up the draft, the authors were guided by one principle: &ldquo;to not needlessly interfere with the activities of civil society institutions, but, at the same time, have our finger on their pulse just in case.&rdquo; The new law, Hovhannisyan continued, envisaged an &ldquo;important reform,&rdquo; allowing NGOs to engage in entrepreneurial activities the proceeds of which would&nbsp;be left entirely in their disposal.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRPA lawmaker Hayk Babukhanyan, for some reason, assumed that a laxer law on public organizations would put Armenia at the risk of &quot;turning the European model into an idol.&rdquo; &ldquo;We should not do that. Otherwise, we&rsquo;ll end up with gay parades on our streets. I don&rsquo;t want to live in such Armenia,&rdquo; he ranted.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tEduard Sharmazanov, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, replied that he didn&rsquo;t believe such a scenario was possible in Armenia. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m of a high opinion about our society, and I hope that at least those present in this hall do not welcome all kinds of colored parades.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tArpine Hovhannisyan, in turn, said: &ldquo;I did not expect that [the discussion of the draft law on NGOs] would lead to the approval or disapproval of different minorities.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tLevon Martirosyan, another RPA representative, was quick to jump on the homophobic wagon: &ldquo;I&rsquo;m against gay parades in general and especially so in Armenia. A joke comes to mind &ndash; a gay parade is to take place, but to save time, it&rsquo;s decided that it should be held right next to a trauma center so that all those battered gays are rushed to doctors as soon as possible.&rdquo;\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe &ldquo;joke&rdquo; sent most of the lawmakers into fits of laughter.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eduard Sharmazanov, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, replied that he didn\u2019t believe such a scenario was possible in Armenia. \u201cI\u2019m of a high opinion about our society, and I hope that at least those present in&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":275007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[62305,12536,22487,28720],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275010"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}