The Hellenic parliament handed a invoice to legalise same-sex marriage on Thursday (15 February), by 176 votes in favour, 76 in opposition to and two abstentions [46 lawmakers were not present at the vote] — making Greece the primary Orthodox Christian nation to undertake such a legislation.
For households like Eleni Maravelia’s, what appeared like a dream 25 years in the past is now a actuality.
Within the early 2000s, Greek-born Eleni fell in love with a lady in England. The couple wished to get married and begin a household, however on the time Greece didn’t even recognise civil unions for same-sex {couples}, so that they moved to Spain in 2005.
”We could not be second-class residents, and that was my feeling,” she advised EUobserver in a name from Barcelona, the place she and her spouse now dwell with their two daughters.
”I felt I needed to do one thing in order that my daughters might have each their moms recognised in Greece, as in Spain,” she added, now speaking as a member of NELFA, an umbrella of European LGBTIQ*-family associations advocating for equal rights for so-called ’rainbow households’.
In Greece, civil unions had been recognised in 2015, which for rainbow households didn’t translate into extending equal parental rights to same-sex {couples} — a set gap underneath the brand new legislation.
The invoice was introduced earlier this 12 months by prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and was agreed in an uncommon collaboration between Mitsotakis’ conservative authorities and left-wing opposition events comparable to Syriza — despite robust opposition from the highly effective Greek Orthodox Church, which fears it might weaken its idea of the ’conventional’ household.
Final Sunday, over 1,500 protestors of traditionalist teams and far-right political events rallied in entrance of the parliament in Athens to oppose the invoice.
Current polls additionally confirmed that civil society appeared divided, whereas simply 55 p.c of Greek residents supporting Mitsotakis’ invoice.
”For me, it says rather a lot about Mitsotakis that he has determined to do that at a time when he has no stress from the opposition and, on prime of that, he might face opposition from inside”, Maravelia stated, as Greece’s prime minister launched the invoice with dissent not solely from the church, however from his personal centre-right occasion.
Up to now, Greece was considered one of 12 member states which didn’t recognise same-sex marriage within the EU, together with Italy, Croatia, or Cyprus, as an illustration.
In the meantime, different jap European nations, comparable to Romania, don’t enable any type of same-sex union, whereas Hungary and Bulgaria have a constitutional ban on marriage for homosexual {couples}.
”Pursuing what must be a given in 2024 will not be precisely gratifying, because it implies that states and societies deal with LGBTQI+ people in a essentially problematic method,” Greek MEP Konstantinos Arvanitis (from the coalition of the Radical Left) advised EUobserver.
In his view, extra substantive equality must be sought by concrete, enforceable, and monitored insurance policies, as a substitute of solely formal equality underneath the legislation.
He referred, for instance, to how homosexual {couples} can be allowed to undertake kids underneath the brand new legislation, however to not have a child by a surrogate, which is feasible for heterosexual {couples} in want of assisted replica.
”I urge teams which have sought to take away references to the well being implications of discriminations in opposition to LGBTQI+ people, in addition to the EU to legislate straight and horizontally on gender-affirmation procedures,” he stated.