Google – AFP, 7 November 2013
A gay pride
protester waves a rainbow flag in front of the Greek parliament
in central
Athens on June 9, 2012 (AFP/File, Aris Messinis)
|
Strasbourg
— Civil unions should not be reserved for heterosexual couples, the European
Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday, condemning Greece for creating a
"life partner" legal category that excludes gays.
Judges in
Strasbourg said that authorities in Orthodox Christian Greece had not offered
"convincing and weighty reasons capable of justifying the exclusion of
same-sex couples" when passing a 2008 law.
Grigoris
Vallianatos and Nikolaos Mylonas, two Greek gay men, alleged with three other
couples that the law infringed their right to respect for their private and
family life, a clause in the European Convention on Human Rights, and amounted
to unjustified discrimination.
The court
noted that European states have no obligation to provide some form of legal
recognition for gay relationships.
But of the
19 states which authorise some form of registered partnership other than
marriage, Lithuania and Greece "are the only ones to reserve it
exclusively for couples of the opposite sex," the Court said.
Fewer than
than half of the 47 signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, of
which the Court is the judicial enforcer, have introduced such alternatives to
marriage.
The Court
said that as the two men had found themselves in a "similar
situation" to heterosexual couples offered the protection of civil
partnerships, they too deserved legal protection.
"Although
European countries' legislation on the issue was not entirely uniform,"
the Court conceded, "there was nevertheless a trend towards legal
recognition of same-sex couples."
Furthermore,
"Greece was the only country to have enacted legislation governing a form
of civil partnership while under the same legislation excluding same-sex
couples from its scope," it said.
The law
passed in November 2008 generated significant debate in Greece, whose Orthodox
Church remains a powerful conservative force.
Greece will
now be compelled to change the law.
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