The influence of the Orthodox Church and poverty are the causes for the intolerance towards the sexual minorities in our country.
The physical and verbal attacks towards the homosexuals show the exaggerated influence of the church in our society. This kind of behavior sets us farther from the occident to which we aspire: in Rome, on Saturday, a million people demanded rights for gay couples without meeting any resistance, verbal or violent.
Most of the time, “the others” are guilty of the things that go wrong with ourselves and in the society. The Jewish people, the black people, the homosexuals have been found guilty for the changes that were felt as negative. The Romanian transition had its scapegoats: the Hungarians and more recently the homosexuals.
Regarding the frequency of a discriminating situation in different contexts, the homosexuals are almost as discriminated as the HIV positive persons; most of the interviewed people indicate school as the place where the discrimination of sexual minorities most often occurs.
The perception towards sexual minorities has not changed too much, even if the relationships between persons of same gender have not been incriminated any more.
The cause is the long period in which it was not debated at all, being a taboo theme. After 1989 it came up slowly in the public debates. What was created in time should be resolved in time, said Asztalos Csaba, president of CNCD.