Greece has approved equal marriage and thus becomes the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize unions between people of the same sex.
Parliament has modified the Civil Code so that gay and lesbian couples can marry.
Greece thus becomes the 37th country to officially recognize families formed by people of the same sex.
The law, which has passed with 176 votes in favor, 76 against and two abstentions, grants them the same rights as heterosexual marriages.
In couples with children, non-biological parents will be able to adopt minors who until now, officially, only had one father or one mother.
They may also adopt a minor together.
The law excludes the possibility of same-sex couples resorting to surrogacy, despite the fact that clinics that offer this service to heterosexual couples are legal in Greece.
Hundreds of people called by LGTBI+ groups have gathered in Athens' Syntagma Square, located in front of Parliament, to celebrate what they consider a victory for their movement.
The rally lasted until almost midnight local time (one hour less in mainland Spain), at which time the voting concluded.
Early in the afternoon, several dozen Christian fundamentalists gathered, also in Syntagma Square, to oppose a law that they consider “satanic” and contrary to their concept of family.
There have been no incidents between the two concentrations.
New Democracy, Syriza, Pasok, Rumbo a la libertad and Nueva Izquierda have voted in favor, compared to the
No
of the three extreme right parties and the Communist Party (the latter formation, with the exception of some minor articles that it has supported, because the law has been voted divided into three sections).
Although the activists gathered in Syntagma assumed that the result of the vote would be favorable, until the last moment the number of supports has not been confirmed, because both New Democracy, Syriza and Pasok had several deputies who had not clarified the meaning of their vote.
In addition to the 176 parliamentarians who voted in favor, the 76 who voted against and the two abstentions, there were 46 deputies who were absent from the vote.
The parliamentary session has been exhausting;
It has been extended throughout Wednesday and Thursday and 130 deputies - out of a total of 300 - have asked to speak during it.
Greece's parliament became accustomed to voting on important laws at midnight, or even in the early hours of the morning, during the financial crisis reforms of the last decade.
The promoter of the law has been Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, which has caused the first internal crisis in his party, New Democracy, since he was elected in 2019. “It is something that our Constitution provides for, and that our society demands, to "that the people around us who until now were invisible can become visible," said the prime minister this Thursday, who has defended that this law is a way to protect children, a statement that is controversial for the most conservative part. of his party.
The most significant vote against was that of former Prime Minister Antonis Samarás, leader of the internal current of New Democracy known as the Karamanlis family.
Ministers Thanos Plevris and Makis Voridis, who belong to the most conservative wing of the party, have been absent so as not to vote against.
Another twenty New Democracy deputies voted against.
The communist party (KKE) has voted against it with the argument of defending the interests of children.
The same argument has been put forward by the extreme right.
For Dimitris Kutsubas, general secretary of the communists, both being homosexual and “the coexistence of two adults” are “individual” issues;
On the contrary, what relates to children “concerns society and goes beyond the individual desire of adults.”
Vasilios Estigas, spokesperson for the Spartans formation – heir to the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn – has declared: “If this sickening bill is approved, the gates of hell and perversion will also open for Greece.”
To the true Spartans, those of Ancient Greece, it would seem ridiculous that someone who takes his name would make homophobic proclamations.
Those of Leónidas considered that homosexuality helped strengthen the bond between citizen-soldier and, therefore, benefited the State.
Tasos Ikonomópulos, deputy of Niki, another far-right party, has opposed it because, according to him, the law “violates the sacred right of every child to grow up with a father and a mother, as the creator God intended by nature.”
Ultra-Orthodox protest against legislation that will allow equal marriage, this Thursday in Athens.
Nikolas Kokovlis (NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Mitsotakis, re-elected in July last year with an absolute majority, aims to occupy the maximum possible space on the political board, from the right to the center.
On the one hand, he disputes the ground with the three far-right parties through one of the toughest immigration policies in Europe.
And, on the other hand, he approves measures like this one, which distance him from a conservative right and profile him as a liberal force.
It is an ambitious strategy that is not without risk.
Greece is not a secular country, the Constitution allows freedom of worship, but establishes Orthodox Christianity as the official religion of the State.
The Church continues to have great power and it is not easy for New Democracy to endorse precepts that the clergy opposes.
Although with different intensity, all the archbishops of Greece oppose equal marriage.
The archbishop of Athens and all Greece, Jerome, had asked that the vote in Parliament be nominal.
That is, each deputy would say out loud whether he was for or against, arguing that “democracy and the interests of the Greek people” depend on it.
It was the first time that an archbishop requested such a concrete measure.
However, it is not what the Parliament table has decided.
Although New Democracy opposes the separation of Church and State, and in fact stopped the constitutional reform in this regard proposed by Syriza in 2019 when it won the elections, Mitsotakis defended this Thursday in Parliament that the State should be independent and “must advance its own actions with the compass of equality before the law.”
In the face of those who accuse him of not defending Christian values, he has proclaimed that "to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's", to remember that the Greek Parliament already ratified years ago civil marriage or the possibility of cremating a body, two issues that were very controversial for the Orthodox Church in their day.
For Syriza it has not been an easy procedure either.
For half a year, the main opposition party has been led by Estéfanos Kaselakis, the first out of the closet politician to lead a party in Greece.
Nobody would understand that he had voted against the rights of his own group.
For this reason, Kaselakis has not only supported the reform from the beginning, but also announced that, unlike New Democracy, Syriza deputies would not have the freedom to vote.
This detail did not sit well with prominent figures in his party, who argued that Syriza should not serve as a crutch for Mitsotakis on an issue that causes internal division.
All eyes have been on Pavlos Polakis, because he was one of the main supporters with whom Kaselakis won the Syriza primaries.
Polakis has not appeared in Parliament and has used the excuse that he was treating patients in his medical office.
His absence has been taken advantage of by Mistotakis, who has tried to minimize the importance of his dissidence by giving visibility to the discrepancies in Syriza and the “thunderous silence” of the Pasok leader, Nikos Androulakis.
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