Greece has become the first Eastern Orthodox country to legalize gay marriage, and the first nation in southeastern Europe to allow it. Gay couples will now also be legally allowed to adopt children after a 176-76 vote by Greece’s parliament on February 15.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the legal change would “abolish a serious inequality.”
The legalization of gay marriage divided the country, with the influential Orthodox Church leading opposition to the legislation. Opponents of gay marriage held a protest rally in Athens, waving banners, and singing passages from the Bible.
The leader of the Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos, said the measure would “corrupt the homeland’s social cohesion”.
The bill needed the support of a simple majority of Greece’s 300-member parliament to become law.
The Prime Minister needed the support of leftist opposition parties to get it passed (such as the Communist Party of Greece), because dozens of legislators from his center-right governing party opposed the bill.
“People who have been invisible will finally be made visible around us, and with them, many children will finally find their rightful place,” the prime minister said. “The reform makes the lives of some of our fellow citizens better, without taking away anything from the lives of the many.”
“This is a historic moment,” Stella Belia, head of the gay parents’ group Rainbow Families. “This is a day of joy.”
Gay marriage is legal in 15 of the European Union’s 27 member states. A European human-rights court ruled that countries in Europe do not have to allow same-sex marriage, in its ruling in Hämäläinen v. Finland (2014). But a growing number of European nations have legalized same-sex marriage since then anyway.
In the U.S., the Supreme Court ruled that states must allow gay marriages, in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). So the U.S. is more liberal than parts of Europe on the subject of gay marriage. Gay marriage is allowed in 35 nations worldwide.
