2024-02-16 01:02:13
The Parliament of Greece approved this Thursday the gay marriage and the adoption of minors by couples from the same sex. In that way, it became the first country of the Orthodox Christian religion to adopt this measure.
The historic initiative was approved with 176 votes in favor, 76 once morest and 2 abstentions.
Some of the 158 deputies of the government party, the conservative New Democracy (ND), voted once morest, abstained or left the Chamber. The head of Government, Kyriakos Mitsotakisgave freedom of vote to the legislators of his party following the internal opposition of the most conservative wing to the measure.
Greece, where a traditional family model predominates, thus became the 37th country in the world to legalize equal marriage. Argentina did it in 2010.
The prime minister made the approval of equal marriage one of his key promises in the campaign in which he achieved a clear victory in June 2023. Mitsotakis repeatedly asked the influential Orthodox Church not to interfere in his own affairs. of the State, and this Thursday he even evoked a biblical passage in the parliamentary debate: “To Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’sâ.
LGTBI rights associations celebrated the “historic” approval of the law, but criticized the fact that surrogacy for homosexual couples has not been authorized.
Since 2015, Greece has allowed a civil union outside the traditional canons, which It does not offer the same legal guarantees as civil marriage.
â€Same-sex parents will finally be able to sleep peacefully at night,†because they will be “free from the fear that if something happens to them, their child will end up in an institution†Mitsotakis declared when presenting the reform before the Council of Ministers at the end of January.
The prime minister has been arguing that the reform makes it possible to put an end to numerous legal inconsistencies that affect many families, even though the reform has angered some of his voters.
Until now, only the biological parent had rights over the child. In the event of his death, the State removed custody from the other parent. Furthermore, children of two parents might not obtain identity documents, since the mother’s name is mandatory in the civil registry.
In a country that is 95% Orthodox, the Church expressed its total opposition to the project from the beginning. “Children have an innate need and right to grow up with a male father and a female mother,” says the Holy Synod, which addressed a letter to the deputies. A sermon was also read in all the churches in the country on Sunday, February 4.
With information from AFP and EFE
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