Navigating anti-gender campaigns amidst creeping autocratization: the case of Georgia

Despite Europeanization bringing progress in terms of legislation protecting their rights, LGBTQ+ community in Georgia is still the most vulnerable group, constantly experiencing discrimination (Luciani, 2023). They usually become targets of anti-gender campaigns led by various actors, such as far-right (violent) groups and the Georgian Orthodox Church. Notwithstanding the ideological differences, far-right groups in Georgia find common ground for mobilization against LGBTQ+ rights. Once marginal actors, these groups have evolved and become more active in the past ten years (Andguladze, 2023; Gelashvili, 2023). Such evolution has been explained by the emergence of political and discursive opportunities provided by the state, the incumbent or powerful players such as the Georgian Orthodox Church (Gelashvili, 2023). On the other hand, anti-gender far-right actors in Georgia are not seen to be genuinely grassroots-originated; instead, they are considered as being reinforced by the incumbent-driven political homophobia (Arjevanidze, 2024). In the last decade, the anti-gender campaigns have transformed, and today may be characterized as a state-led policy, with the Georgian Dream-led government as its key driver. This trend has become particularly noticeable in recent years, as the Georgian government has undergone an autocratic turn, resulting in increasingly overt homophobic rhetoric and culminating in the adoption of the so-called ‘anti-LGBTQ+ bill’ in September 2024. The legislation would restrict the rights of and further stigmatize LGBTQ+ community in Georgia. The state-led anti-gender campaign should be considered a part of a broader autocratization process unfolding in the country. Along with the adoption of the ‘anti-LGBTQ+ bill’, in 2024, Georgian Dream passed the so-called ‘foreign agent’ law that threatens Georgian civil society and puts further pressure on community-based LGBTQ+ organizations and activists. While the adoption of the ‘foreign agent’ law was met with fiery opposition and resistance from broad segments of society protesting for weeks in the spring of 2024, the ‘anti-LGBTQ+ bill’ was passed in the context of relative silence from pro-democratic actors in Georgia. Against this background, this paper analyses to what extent we can observe opposition and resistance from civil society actors to anti-gender campaigns. I look at (1) discursive (goals) and (2) action-oriented strategies of Georgian civil society actors against anti-gender campaigns in Georgia throughout the 2013-2024 period. The article first analyses the shifts in the legal and political environment for LGBTQ+ rights in Georgia and traces the changing role of anti-gender actors from far-right groups, the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Government of Georgia. Next, through content analysis of published statements and interviews with civil society organizations and activists working on LGBTQ+ rights, this article traces various types of responses depending on the context in which civil society actors navigate: from pre-autocratization phase to autocratization at a later stage. The paper thus contributes to the two interconnected and emerging strands of the literature: opposition and resistance to autocratization through a civil society perspective and democratic resilience against anti-gender actors.