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On Tuesday, the Slovenian parliament approved a law allowing same-sex people to marry and adopt children: 48 MPs voted in favor, 29 against and one abstained. Slovenia is the first Eastern European country to have such a law: so far the country has recognized a form of registered same-sex partnership, giving access to certain rights such as pension and property rights, but it was still quite limited (e.g. it saw no adoption before).
In fact, marriages and adoptions for homosexual couples have been legal in Slovenia since last July, when the Constitutional Court ruled that previous bans on the subject were unconstitutional and discriminatory, based on the cases of two homosexual couples who had been subjected to them. The court had ordered Parliament to legislate within six months, but in fact the ruling immediately allowed same-sex people to marry because it overrode the articles of the Constitution that defined marriage solely as the union between a man and a woman .
The Constitutional Court’s decision came weeks after the country formed a liberal and progressive government led by current Prime Minister Robert Golob’s Freedom Movement Party, which surprisingly won the elections at the end of April. Golob’s government replaced the conservative and populist government of Janez Jansa from the Slovenian Democratic Party, whose representatives have sharply criticized the court’s decision and organized several protests in recent months.
In July, judges at the Constitutional Court said their decision did not diminish the importance of heterosexual marriage or the conditions under which people of the opposite sex marry. “It just means that two same-sex partners can now marry like straight people,” they said. The July decision covered marriage only, but the new law also included the possibility of adoption for same-sex couples.
Presenting the text in Parliament, Foreign Minister Simon Maljevac said: “With these changes, we are recognizing the rights that same-sex couples should have for a long time.”
Slovenia was created in 1991 after the dissolution of former Yugoslavia and has been part of the European Union since 2004. With this law, it is decidedly at the forefront of civil rights compared to neighboring countries with a similar history, but also compared to others in the European Union, including Italy: so far, same-sex marriages are legal only in 14 EU member states (including Slovenia) of 27
– Also read: Raising a non-traditional family in Italy