President George W. Bush signs a guest book after Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga presented him the Order of the Three Stars, First-Class at Riga Castle in Riga, Latvia, Saturday, May 7, 2005. Established in 1924 to commemorate the founding of the Latvian State, the medal is awarded to recognize outstanding civil merit in the service of Latvia.
White House photo by Eric DraperDoes Pastor and discrimination-activist Ken Hutcherson see in Latvia the possibility of creating the kind of church-based (or Christianist as Andrew Sullivan calls it) government that he and his allies would like to see in the US? It seems possible. But the US Embassy, the State Department, and Latvia's President and friend-of-GWB Vaira Vike-Freiberga -- along with most people in Latvia -- may be standing in the way of his dream. David Postman has more on Hutcherson's complaints about what the preacher regards as inappropriate support from the US Embassy in Riga for the Latvian gay rights group Mozaika. Postman couldn't confirm Hutcherson's claims that the embassy helped to fund the gay group, but finds evidence that the embassy has helped the group which was formed in 2006 after a violence-tinged gay pride march was organized in Riga in 2005.
The Embassy has helped organize events with Mozaika to promote tolerance of lesbians and gays -- as has the embassies of the UK and Sweden -- and the ambassador and Embassy staff have worked to protect gay rights activists when violent anti-gay protests broke out in Riga last year. The United States has documented anti-gay activities in Latvia. A report on Latvia's 2006 human rights record was released March 6 by the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. It confirms what gay activists say, that Latvia has seen "societal violence and occasional government discrimination against homosexuals."
Hutcherson's dream of a Christianist Latvia [contd.]
Postman gives a good summary of the State Department report, and finds even more supporting documentation. It appears to confirm, in more bureaucratic language, the problems reported in prior posts here that gay rights activists have run into in Latvia. Hutcherson went to Latvia to align himself with religious/political activists in that country and to agitate against the US Embassy's support of Mozaika. From Postman:
He says that supporting Mozaika goes against American values as well as against the wishes of a majority of the Latvian people. In a speech in Riga earlier this month Hutcherson
is reported to have said:
Latvia is a Christian country ... and we need to do everything to ensure that even in the European Union it does not loose its principles. It is a holy right of any nation to decide (in) what society to live.
Hutcherson's assertion that "Latvia is a Christian country" is something that is partly factual since 80% of Latvians claim to be Christians,
according to reports, but also deeply aspirational. It's also every bit as political as such a statement would be if made about the US. From our long-distance view filtered only through various web sources, the political nature of the assertion appears to be paramount in Latvia. It appears to us from our extraordinarily limited view that Hutcherson and his American partner for the trips to Latvia,
Scott Lively, see in that small country a chance to remake a secular democracy into the kind of Christianist nation that they would like to see in the US. Homophobia appears to be stoked by some politicians in Latvia in the same way that anti-marriage-equality initiatives have been used in the US to increase the vote for right-wing politicians.
Importance of religion Country
- Nigeria
- Uganda
- Philippines
- Zimbabwe
- Malta
- Bangladesh
- El Salvador
- Egypt
- Iran
- Jordan
- Colombia
- South Africa
- Poland
- Peru
- Brazil
- Dominican Republic
- Ireland
- Mexico
- Turkey
- United States
- India
- Chile
- Venezuela
- Argentina
- Romania
- Azerbaijan
- Morocco
- Northern Ireland
- Italy
- Greece
- Georgia
- Portugal
- Canada
- Bosnia
- Croatia
- Slovakia
- Moldova
- Albania
- Lithuania
- Armenia
- Austria
- Spain
- Macedonia
- Switzerland
- Iceland
- Australia
- Taiwan
- Uruguay
- Ukraine
- Serbia
- Luxembourg
- West Germany
- Belgium
- Finland
- Latvia
- Slovenia
- New Zealand
- Tanzania
- Montenegro
- Hungary
- Netherlands
- Belarus
- Britain
- Japan
- Norway
- Bulgaria
- Russia
- Vietnam
- France
- Estonia
- Denmark
- Sweden
- South Korea
- Czech Republic
- East Germany
- China
To a group of University of Michigan sociologists who have collected data for a
long-running study of world-wide values, Latvia did not appear to be a deeply religious society. Based on data from their surveys, the researchers ranked 76 countries according to the relative "Importance of religion" in the society. China came in dead last, Nigeria was at the top of the list. The US is rated at a relatively high #20, but Latvia placed in the bottom third of the list at #55, just below Finland and above Slovenia and New Zealand. (The
list was published as part of a non-related
series on religion by Detroit Free Press. I haven't been able to find backup material for the list, but it can serve as a slight counter-balance to the general statements made by Hutcherson and politicians trying to make their point.) As in most post-Communist countries, religious institutions in Latvia have had to
reestablish themselves and redefine their positions within the society after more than a generation of suppression while the country was part of the Soviet Union. It appears that some churches and church leaders have turned to politics to do that. In coalition with a nationalist party, a small party representing religious interests
won 10 seats in the Saeima, Latvia's parliament, during last fall's election.
From Latvians Online:
Finally, one other new party gained representation, the First Party of Latvia (Latvijas Pirma partija). Latvian elections always throw up at least one curiosity and this is it. Dubbed the "religious party" and having on its list some prominent clergy, it also has a number of other decidedly less spiritual politicians, including some familiar managerial and bureaucratic faces from previous parties no longer represented in the Saeima. They may be hardest to predict of all.
As in Italy and most Eastern European countries [and, interestingly, in America's Iraq], Latvians vote for a party list rather than for a particular candidate. Seats in the Saeima are then apportioned according to the party's vote percentage. The religious party, LPP, gained enough seats to be included in the center-right coalition that governs Latvia and re-elected its prime minister to a first-ever second term. In a comment to an earlier post here, Latvian blogger Peteris Cedrins points out that the religious party wasn't particularly successful with their Christianist message:
[D]espite pouring money into a slick campaign and LPP exploiting "family values" whenever it could, the combined list received only 8.58% of the vote in October's parliamentary elections. "Family values" don't translate into too many votes, apparently -- which is part of why the party is now focusing upon the Russophone vote.[graph added in addendum] Despite the votes, however, in a controversial move, the ruling coalition appointed
one of the more homophobic members of the LPP to a significant parliamentary post:
And in a move of extreme cynicism, the coalition appointed once-head LPP guru Janis Smits to chair of the Saeima Human Rights and Social Affairs Committee. Smits, a Lutheran prelate, was notable in 2006 for his extreme homophobia and sustained attack on the Riga Pride march, and his otherwise overtly authoritarian stance on every social issue. So bad had his reputation become that he was not elected in his own right to the Saeima (his own party supporters crossed out his name in droves), but came into the Saeima with a so-called "soft mandate," replacing another LPP member who was appointed a cabinet minister.From that post, Smits could help enforce the kind of homophobia that has marred Riga's Pride events for the past two years. From its now-limited position within the ruling coalition, LPP -- the religious party -- is maneuvering to gain more power, partly by aligning itself with pro-Russian and anti-Western party.
Meanwhile, for LPP and its ambitious leader Slesers an amalgamation would provide an opportunity to become the largest party in the Saeima. The politicians of Saskanas centrs (and of course PCTVL) are unreservedly hostile to Latvians from abroad playing any part in Latvian affairs. Unless the coalition in its present or expanded form trips up on its own ambitions -- a not impossible course of events -- we may all be in for a tough four years.
As in most parliamentary democracies, Latvia's president -- the head of state -- has little political power, but Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the president who will finish her second and final term in July, has her power and influence judiciously to promote healing in the still-new republic. She has been credited with steering the country through the shoals of ethnic/regional rivalries and historical animosities to become a generally vibrant and more-or-less tolerant European democracy.
The parliament will choose Vike-Freiberga's successor in a few months. Hutcherson and his associates appear to hope that the country will then move in a new direction, a direction that is far less open and tolerant. Unfortunately, they seem to be hoping that that little country on the corner of Europe could become a model for what they'd like to see here in the US.
Last modified: 25 Apr 09 04:04
ken hutcherson, country_latvia, history