The segment aired on ETV's Sunday morning "Hommik Anuga" show and featured a gay couple and their two children who were born with the help of a surrogate.

On Monday (November 10), EKRE party Chairman Martin Helme described the broadcast as an "attack on real fathers" and real families." 

"On Sunday morning, ERR showed in a so-called soft family entertainment format a homosexual couple who brought along the children they had purchased. [ERR] are not acting as journalists but as extreme political activists. This institution cannot be fixed. Nor is there any point in trying. It simply needs to be dismantled," Helme said.

The party submitted the bill on Wednesday. The authors said the measure aims to create more privately owned competition and diversity in the public information space. 

Under the bill, the 2007 Estonian Public Broadcasting Act, which created ERR, would be repealed and ERR as a legal entity would be dissolved. Following this, the Government Office would be tasked with privatizing ERR's online portals, radio, and television channels.

Two exceptions to this would be the classical music station Klassikaraadio and the radio news station

Vikerraadio. Klassikaraadio's operations would be transferred to Eesti Kontsert along with the corresponding budgetary funds.

Vikerraadio would be placed under the Government Office and, in normal times, would continue to provide entertainment content supported by the state budget and serve public broadcast emergency alerts.

Additionally, ERR's archives and the responsibility and funding to conserve them would be transferred to the national Film Archive.

ERR board chair Erik Roose said EKRE's proposal is not to be taken seriously, calling it rather absurd. "But it is a threat to freedom of speech and democracy," he added.

EKRE has 10 MPs at the 101-seat Riigikogu. If passed, bills must pass three readings in the Riigikogu with a majority before being sent to the head of state for assent.

The 2007 act merged the formerly separate Estonian Radio and Estonian TV, to form ERR.

No consensus within ERR's council

ERR Council chair Rein Veidemann told Postimees the content shown in the program was "very inappropriate within the value space in which most Estonians live."

"Most fathers are in traditional relationships. Many questions arise: how is the child conceived, which father plays the mother's role? Care for children can also be expressed without men being in a relationship with each other," he told the newspaper.

Valdo Randpere (Reform), a member of both the Riigikogu and the ERR Council, said Veidemann's comment was incorrect and concerning.

"The council and its chair do not have the legal right to interfere with the content of individual programs or to start determining which family or person fits Estonia's value space and which does not," he wrote on social media.

"If the head of the council cannot defend the independence and ethics of public broadcasting, then the most honorable way to uphold that principle may be to step aside. The role of public broadcasting is not to exclude, but to unite — to reflect life in Estonia as it is: diverse, humane, and full of care," the politician said.

Government condemns comments

The government parties criticized both EKRE's bill and Veidemann's statement.

Prime Minister Kristen Michal (Reform) said EKRE has repeatedly attacked both media freedom and individual freedom in the Riigikogu.

"Why is their sense of identity always tied to other people's bedrooms? What's that about? Who someone chooses to love is nobody else's business. If children are growing up safe and happy, what could be better?" he wrote on social media.

Michal said he believes no one should dictate how people live their private lives. "And for that matter, ERR Council Chair Rein Veidemann has no such right either. In fact, it raises the question: whom is he representing with such a statement?"

The prime minister emphasized that marriage equality is legal in Estonia: "This means that all families have the same right to happiness and love. It is, in fact, those who wish to revoke who do not belong in the value space of a free and progressive country."

Leader of the junior coalition party Eesti 200 and Minister of Education Kristina Kallas said, separately: "Last week it was the withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, this week the erasure of a same-sex couple. And I thought we had already outgrown these developmental struggles — that as a stronger society, we protect everyone's rights and do not have to keep fighting these battles over and over again."

The minister stressed that same-sex couples in Estonia should not feel insecure about whether they are allowed to walk down the street with their children or appear on television to celebrate Father's Day.

"It is certainly inappropriate for the chair of the public broadcaster's supervisory board to cancel people and their rights in Estonia. And women in Estonia should certainly not feel uncertain about whether an international agreement that defends their rights and condemns all violence against the vulnerable is applicable here," she stressed.

Kallas said same-sex marriage has given Estonia several hundred happy marriages. "Hundreds of Estonians now feel more secure in this country, are raising children, and want to live in Estonia. I hope Rein Veidemann understands that too," Kallas concluded.

Last week, EKRE launched a campaign to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, which opposes violence against women and domestic violence.

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