In his speech today to the National Assembly, Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, referring to news about an upcoming LGBT rally in Yerevan, said that the family and the Armenian family model are of the highest value to him.

Pashinyan addressed the issue in response to a query posed by Tsarukyan Faction MP Gevorg Petrosyan, saying that he had instructed the government to ascertain what type of rally was being planned for the end of November.

“When I was in Paris, I ordered a coffee. A young person brought it and said, ‘Hello Mr. Prime Minister’. I asked, ‘Are you Armenian? A revolution has taken place and there’s repatriation. Don’t you want to move back?’ He said, ‘I barely escaped from there.’ He was from one of the provincial capitals in Armenia. He said he lived there with a friend,” Pashinyan said.

Pashinyan then asked the assembled MPs, “Do we accept the fact that there are people, in any country, that have a non-traditional sexual position? If we accept that there are, how do we deal with them?”

Pashinyan continued by saying that in the Soviet Union such people were charged and imprisoned, noting they were hanged in earlier times.

“What will we do?” Pashinyan asked the MPs, adding that it wasn’t in the government’s best interest to reflect on the matter of homosexuality because his comments would automatically be misrepresented by various segments of society,

Some would interpret his words as supporting an alternative lifestyle, while others would demand that he categorically defends LGBT rights, Pashinyan explained.