10 percent of Kazakhstan citizens are homosexuals: public union

Around 10 percent of Kazakhstan citizens are homosexuals, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Director of Community public fund Nikita Naumov. According to him, there is no official statistics on the number of representatives of sexual minorities living in Kazakhstan, as many gays and lesbians do not want to openly declare their sexual orientation. However, the experts believe that about 10 percent of Kazakhstan citizens belong to LGBT community (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders). Almaty has the highest number of homosexual citizens. According to him, the fund renders support to over 4 thousand representatives of sexual minorities per year. Earlier Majilis deputy Kaibek Suleimenov expressed his opinion that Kazakhstan required mechanisms of countering same-sex relationships. Back in 2011 representatives of sexual minorities applied to parliament deputy Anatoliy Bashmakov with a request to legalize same-sex marriages. "I would like to say that the law allowing same-sex marriage was adopted in seven European countries and three countries are already working on the draft laws that would allow adoption of children by same-sex couples. This is exactly what is hindering us from promotion of morals and we should not let this happen. Even in Kazakhstan's secular society with strong national traditions there have been letters and I have received the letters requesting to legalize not only monogamous but also polygamous families," Bashmako said at the seminar on the Marriage and Family Code in December 2011. According to him, the new code is not just a law, but a real set of moral rules that will help Kazakhstan retain the traditions of health family and avoid loss of spirituality and morals, as it is already happening in Europe in his view. Deputy Justice Minister Amirkhan Amanbayev said that the issue of same-sex marriages was not considered during discussion of Kazakhstan Marriage and Family Code. "When writing laws we have to consider our national traditions. Same-sex marriages are not normal for Kazakhstan," he said. Meanwhile, Naumov noted that banning same-sex marriages takes the community back to the Middle Ages. He stressed that the community stands for legalization of such relations. Besides, he told that May 17 was the International Day Against Homophobia, but representatives of sex minorities were not planning to celebrate it openly in 2013. "The government and population in Kazakhstan are negative about LGBT community, that's why we don't want to provoke them," Naumov said. However, some representatives of sexual minorities are still expected to join the Rainbow Flashmob traditionally held on May 17. Members of the LGBT community usually let balloons off in the sky. This time there will be black balloons as well. Russian and some Kazakhstan citizens will use the black balloons to pay tribute to one young man who was massacred for his sexual orientation in Volgograd on May 9.