The chair of the Committee on Human Rights, National Minorities and International Relations of the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) has called homosexual people “evil” and is calling for a fight against them, the Gaywired web-site reports.

“We consider that such public statements by a high ranking politician, whose duty it is to protect human rights, are simply inadmissible in civilized democratic society,” said a spokesperson from the Nash Mir (Our World) Gay and Lesbian Centre.

Communist Deputy (MP) Leonid Grach, who heads the human rights committee of the Supreme Council (parliament), said in an interview last November that “homosexuality is an anomaly, which is caused by the amorality and the depravity of man.”

He also expressed confidence that the present Parliament will not vote for a law legalising same-sex unions and permitting them to adopt children – and added that in the next Parliament the question will not be raised at all.

Ukrainian gay and lesbian groups were outraged at the statement and wrote to Mr. Grach, calling for him to respect and protect the rights of homosexuals.

However the plea fell on deaf ears and last week Mr. Grach hurled new insults at the gay community.

“I, and my colleagues in Parliament, have to defend society from intrusions upon morality,” he said last week.

“We must not admit into the consciousness – and souls – of people of any age the thought that the State is on the side of the people who are sowing debauchery, propagandising for depravity, for sexual permissiveness, and for bringing the abomination of seduction into society.

“The State must protect society from an evil, from violence, including such evil as homosexuality, lesbianism and suchlike others,” he said.

The MP considered that Ukrainians must observe the norms of “moral cleanliness, bequeathed to us from ancient times by orthodox ancestors.”