ECONOMYNEXT – Sri Lanka President Anura Kumara Dissanayake known as on the island nation’s influential Buddhist leaders days after they warned towards his authorities’s LGBTQ plans to spice up extra vacationers.
The Chief Prelates of all three Buddhist Chapters earlier this week wrote to President Dissanayake expressing concern over the federal government initiatives together with LGBTQ tourism promotion and warned that the brand new strikes might hurt cultural values and result in severe social penalties.
Of their letter, the Buddhist leaders identified that efforts geared toward selling tourism by means of LGBTQ-related actions, might give rise to what they described as “severe social catastrophes.”
In addition they raised objections to proposed amendments to the Penal Code, which search to introduce an offence of corporal punishment, which can have damaging implications.
President Dissanayake on Friday met Chief Prelates of the Malwathu and Asgiri Chapters and obtained their blessings, the President’s Media Division (PMD) mentioned in an announcement.
It additional mentioned the President “engaged in a short dialogue and obtained blessings” with out elaborating.
Later he additionally visited the Asgiri temple and met the Chief Prelate of Asgiri Chapter and “engaged in a short dialog”.
In Sri Lanka, non secular leaders from all main faiths have expressed robust opposition to the promotion of pro-LGBTQ legal guidelines, even when such reforms are framed as a method to spice up tourism and entice overseas guests.
Their resistance is rooted within the perception that LGBTQ rights battle with conventional cultural values, household constructions, and non secular teachings that view heterosexual marriage as the one acceptable type of union.
Many clerics argue that authorized recognition or public promotion of LGBTQ rights would erode the nation’s ethical cloth and encourage practices they take into account sinful or unnatural.
In addition they worry that prioritizing tourism income by means of liberal reforms might compromise the nation’s non secular id and set a precedent for overseas affect in home coverage.
Because of this, non secular leaders have been vocal in urging the federal government to protect what they name Sri Lanka’s “cultural integrity,” warning that aligning legal guidelines with world liberal tendencies might set off social backlash and deepen divisions between conservative communities and advocates of progressive change. (Colombo/October 3/2025)
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