Two in ten gays tell nobody about their sexual orientation, poll

About 80% of the members of the LGB (lesbians, gays and bisexuals) community of Moldova trust most their friends and then their siblings as well as their mothers, faculty colleagues and the doctor. The fathers are trusted by a minimum number of LGB members, shows an opinion poll conducted by the Information Center “GenderDoc-M”, which was presented in a news conference at Info-Prim Neo on September 29. Angela Frolov, coordinator of the association’s Lobby and Advocacy Program, said only 46% of the 220 LGB members questioned told the members of their families about their sexual orientation. Asked to describe their first reaction, half of the respondents said the friends had mainly a positive reaction, half of the parents were shocked, two in ten parents had a negative reaction, while the rest were indifferent. The negative reaction came mainly from men. 19% of LGB men and 2% of LGB women told nobody about their sexual orientation. “This shows that the men are more reticent about their sexual orientation because the people react more aggressively to gays than to lesbians,” said Angela Frolov. As to cases of violation of the rights, 57% of those polled said they faced problems because of their sexual orientation. According to the poll, in most of the cases the representatives of the LGB community are insulted, threatened with physical harassment or pursued. Angela Frolov said most of the respondents said they feel the people are intolerant of them. “If the law on the prevention and combating of discrimination is adopted, it will supplement not only the Civil Code and offer the victims of harassment the real possibility of filing complaints to court, but also the Penal Code, where there was introduced the notion of “hate crime”, but which is not defined in our legislation,” she stated. When carrying out the poll, the volunteers were unable to cover the transgender people and their problems as only one of the 220 respondents said he was transgender. The LGB community was questioned within the Facing Existence of Discrimination Project with the financial support of ILGA-Europe.