Greece Plans to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage Soon, Premier Mitsotakis Says

Paul Tugwell
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(Bloomberg) -- Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that his country is close to allowing same-sex couples to marry and to adopt children.

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“What we will legislate is marriage equality. That is, the elimination of any discrimination based on sexual orientation in the matter of entering into a marriage,” Mitsotakis said Wednesday in an interview with state-run ERT television. Current discussions on the framework of the legislation “won’t take long,” and the draft law will be presented in more detail in the coming days, he said.

Mitsotakis introduced a number of reforms to advance LGBTQ rights after coming to power in 2019, and legalizing same-sex marriage was part of his re-election agenda. Shortly after winning a second term in June, he told Bloomberg Television that he was committed to the changes, adding that Greek society was broadly ready for them.

Like a majority of European states, Greece allows same-sex civil unions but they fall short of guaranteeing full equality with married couples and don’t automatically come with the same adoption rights and parental recognition.

Single men have been allowed to adopt children in Greece since 1946. Under the proposal, if a man with an adopted child then marries another man both will be recognized as parents.

Full parental rights will be given to the non-biological parent in couples that already have children, Mitsotakis added.

The legislation won’t allow two men to become parents through a surrogate mother in Greece, but children already born to male same-sex couples that way will have the same rights as other children, he said.

Some of the more socially conservative members of Mitsotakis’s center-right New Democracy party have said they intend to either oppose the legislation or abstain from the vote — including Minister of State Makis Voridis and former premier Antonis Samaras.

But the bill is widely expected to pass with the support of four center-left and left-wing parties. Among them: the main opposition Syriza party whose leader, Stefanos Kasselakis, is openly gay and married his American partner in the US in October.

Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis on Tuesday brushed off fierce opposition from the influential Greek Orthodox church, saying that while the church’s opinion is important, it’s the government that makes laws.

Since the first same-sex couples were legally married in the Netherlands in 2001, more than 30 other jurisdictions have enacted laws allowing same-sex marriage, according to Pew Research. Most of them are in the Americas and Europe.

Estonia joined that list earlier this month, becoming the first Baltic nation to recognize same-sex marriage and adding to positive momentum for LGBTQ rights in Europe. Public discourse on minority rights is becoming more polarized in the region, though, and some governments are cracking down on their LGBTQ communities, namely in Hungary and Italy.

If passed by parliament, the draft bill becomes law as soon as it is published in the government gazette — unless a start date is specified.

--With assistance from Sotiris Nikas.

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