Once again, small Slovenia is showing a rare progressivism within the “ex-Eastern countries”. Following a historic decision taken on Friday July 8 by the Constitutional Court of this Balkan country with just over 2 million inhabitants, Slovenian homosexuals are the first in the entire post-communist European area to have the right to marry and adopt children. The ban on marriage and adoption for homosexual couples is “unacceptable discrimination against same-sex couples”, decided the Court.
Called to speak on two cases involving homosexual couples, the judges of Ljubljana, by six votes to three, gave the Slovenian Parliament six months to comply with their decision. But they also added that the essence of their judgment was of immediate application. “It is a complete victory for us after long efforts by civil society”celebrates Lana Gobec, president of Legebitra, the main Slovenian association fighting for LGBT rights.
Also welcoming the decision, Prime Minister Robert Golob’s government has pledged to introduce adaptation legislation by “a week or two”. “We promise to work to prepare and adopt legislative amendments as soon as possible to ensure equal rights for all”said the freedom movement (center left) of Mr. Golob, which should be able to count on its large majority in Parliament to adopt this law without difficulty.
Slovenia is the eighteenth country in Europe to allow marriage for all, but this is a first for a former communist country. Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia until its independence in 1991. In recent years, contrary to the Slovenian case, other countries in the region such as Hungary or Croatia have included in their constitutions a strictly heterosexual definition of marriage, in response to advances in LGBT rights in Western Europe.
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“We have always been the most progressive on this issue among the other countries of Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia, so it is logical that we follow this tradition which dates back thirty-five years”, believes Natasa Sukic, a lesbian activist since the 1980s and now a member of Parliament under the label of the left-wing Levica party, a member of the current ruling coalition. This figure of the Slovenian LGBT scene, however, fears that conservative Catholic circles, which remain very influential in this still very religious country, will try to block the application of this decision.
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