“The government does not hesitate to bring to a vote a bill that restores an injustice and through which we give a hand to our fellow citizens, instead of pointing the finger at them,” said Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Minister of Education, Religion and Sports, in an intervention of, in the debate that is developing in the plenary on equality in civil marriage.
The happiness of every child is an obligation, said K. Pierrakakis
The Minister of Education called on the political forces to vote in favor of the bill, “mainly, because the safety, stability and happiness of every child is an obligation”. Mr. Pierrakakis said that the institutional recognition of the equal rights of children is an antidote and the elimination of discrimination in schools is obviously a priority for the Ministry of Education. But he also sent a message to the Church.
In a parliamentary democracy of the Western world, one does not often have the opportunity to legislate, in favor of the removal of discrimination and the extension of rights, the Minister of Education said to note, in this light, that “this session has historical character”.
“The abolition of discrimination and the expansion of rights are on two lines, the history of the west to which we belong. The result is that through all this expansion of rights over time, with all the flaws and all the problems that may characterize them, the societies and democracies we live in today are much better than those of the past, because citizens enjoy much more rights, much more freedoms”, said Kyriakos Pierrakakis and added that every moral issue should be evaluated by seeing oneself in the position of anyone else and judge the development, based on that scenario, for any decision. “It is the moral rule, to put yourself in the place of the other, empathy, as a moral value,” said the Minister of Education and, in this sense, he emphasized that the moral sign and value of this bill is self-evident.
The minister pointed out that since 1946, single men and single women have been adopting and raising children. Some of them may then live with people of a different sex, validate their relationship, secure their children with a marriage, and some others may live and raise their children with people of the same sex, but in the absence of the possibility of civil marriage, they and their children do not have access to crucial rights.
“The institutionalization of equality in civil marriage, comes to offer these children civil rights and the same legal protection, with which the children of heterosexual couples grow up. We cannot show indifference to these children”, said Kyriakos Pierrakakis.
“The core of the problem we’re solving is that we don’t want children growing up in same-sex families who lack a legal obligation to one parent to continue to be at risk—if the recognized parent is lost, the children end up in the institution,” he said. the Minister of Education.
Especially for his area of responsibility, Mr. Pierrakakis said that “the bullying that these children suffer at school will disappear if our society stops treating them differently. The institutional recognition of the equal rights of children is an antidote and the elimination of discrimination in schools is obviously a priority for the Ministry of Education, because bullying spreads where the existence of prejudices is legitimized and the strongest regulatory institution is none other than the state.
The Minister of Education, Religions and Sports also referred to the Church, saying: “The relations between the State and the Church, their roles are distinct. But they must be characterized through time, by the term synalelia. This means that they have institutionally imprinted roles in the Constitution but there must be cooperation between them to exercise these roles in full. Despite the fact that sometimes there may be different opinions and perceptions, I must emphasize that we honor and respect the Church and for the fact that it has proven that disagreements, sometimes on a moral level, with people and groups, do not equate to exclusion of people and of these groups from her classes. It does not exclude anyone who does not conform, with aspects of the Christian moral code, from entering the Church, it does not deprive him of the right to the hope of religion. This attitude contributes to social peace, social cohesion, social progress”.
Source: RES
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