Slovak school students need your help!
The time has come. Limits of morality have been crossed and Slovak students must speak up!
In the recent months the so called “Alliance for family” started a national initiative promoting “traditional family rights” and its legal protection, claiming that a family can only be composed by a man and a woman, also saying that gay people are the “bad ones” in our society, and referring to homosexuality as a sickness.
In Slovakia, the LGBTQ minority is often verbally assaulted and excluded from the society. In the upcoming weeks a new (homophobic) law shall be adopted by the government, stating that marriage is the relationship between men and women only. In line with the proposed legislation, the “Alliance for family” has started a new initiative, asking for a referendum, based on four questions. The aim of the referendum is to clarify and to make the current law concerning homosexuality more specific on: same sex marriages; adoption of children by couples of the same sex; legal protection of same sex marriages; the choice of sex education for children (that is not compulsory yet).
The petition for the referendum was signed by 400 000 people (Slovakia has 5 million inhabitants), even though on their Facebook page there are only 4000 likes. They were able to collect this huge amount of signatures, because “Alliance for family” is strongly supported by the Church. This fact shows what type of difficulties we have to face and that is why we need your help.
Stredoškolská študentská únia Slovenska (SUS), while accepting the freedom of opinion and expression, believes that the limits of what is acceptable were crossed, when the billboard campaign was launched during the last weeks. On the billboard (see picture) you can read: “This is not discrimination, this just doesn´t work”. On one hand the image shows that the relationship between man and woman is the only one that works without any exceptions and it leads to a happy family life; on the other hand, the relationship of same sex partners leads to a blank picture. Same sex couples have no future, no possibility of happiness and fulfilment.
No discrimination they say? How should we call it?
ŠUS is concerned about the hate message this billboard brings up and, following many disappointed messages we received from our members, we decided to act and react.
What can you do to help us?
You could send us a support letter (it does not need to be very long), which states your organisation’s opinion and support, together with a request of stopping the hate speech and the referendum.
We intend to collect all the support letters in order to raise awareness about this issue at national and international level, as well as to inform the Slovak President (who needs to give an approval for the referendum), and also to show our support to LGBTQ organisations in Slovakia. We will also demand to remove all of these billboards.
Please take action and send your letters to janasikorska@gmail.com. An international support would definitely strengthen our position!
For more information and for further details please don’t hesitate to contact Jana Šikorská.
Thank you in advance!
Written by SUS – Stredoškolská študentská únia Slovenska
