Slovakian culture minister blames sexual minorities for Europe’s low birth rate – POLITICO

Unlike racist and anti-Semitic comments, homophobic statements are not prohibited in Slovakia.

“Support for racism and anti-Semitism has no place in Europe in 2024. We know where such tendencies have led in the past. We call on Minister Šimkovičová to resign immediately,” said Weisenbacher.

Slovakia was rocked by the murder of two gay men outside a gay bar in Bratislava in October 2022, but the rights of sexual minorities have come under further pressure since the left-wing populist government of Prime Minister Robert Fico took office last year. Fico had previously described the adoption of children by same-sex couples as a “perversion” and mockingly urged opposition leader Michal Šimečka to “decide … whether he is a boy, a girl or a helicopter today”.

Meanwhile, Deputy Parliament Speaker Andrej Danko, who represents the coalition’s far-right junior partner, the Slovak National Party, said on Sunday that the Culture Ministry would no longer finance films whose “topics cross moral and ethical boundaries, including LGBTQ+.”

This is not the first time that Šimkovičová has expressed such sentiments. In January, she announced that the Ministry of Culture would stop funding LGBTQ+ projects in order to “return to normality”.

Before joining Fico’s government, Šimkovičová worked as a news anchor for the commercial broadcaster TV Markíza, which fired her in 2015 for spreading xenophobic content on social media. She later moved to the disinformation channel TV Slovan, where she spread conspiracy theories.