Bulgaria¶
The Bulgarian case shows how a stigmatising law can pass without anyone in the mainstream having to argue for it. The fringe supplies the text, borrowed from abroad, and the parties expected to resist supply the votes, because in a fractured parliament opposing it costs more than letting it through. Authorship and responsibility come apart: those who wrote the law did not have the majority, and those who had the majority did not write it. Self-purification here is carried out by the centre, on the far right’s behalf.
The clerk’s briefs¶
From the clerks, for the Patrician’s eyes
A minute of his Lordship’s time. Teachers now work under a ban they have to define for themselves, and many will avoid the subject rather than risk it; the pupils it is aimed at learn what their school may not say about them. The far right gains a method: draft the statute and let the centre’s fear of losing votes pass it, and the next import needs only a sponsor. A centre willing to pay the electoral price of voting no, or a court striking the law down, would break the pattern.
August 2024: The mainstream votes yes¶
On 7 August 2024 the Bulgarian parliament voted by 159 to 22, with 13 abstentions, to amend the school education law. It prohibits “propaganda, promoting or inciting” of LGBTQ+ “ideas and views” in schools, and schools may not encourage any “gender identity other than biological”. The far-right Vazrazhdane proposed it; pro-EU parties supported it. The law follows similar legislation in Hungary and Russia. The clerks note that the bill came from the fringe and the majority came from the centre.