Greece’s Parliament Has Approved Bill Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage

In a landmark victory for LGBTQ advocates, Greece’s Parliament has approved (by a vote of 176-76) a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the socially conservative country. In doing so, Greece becomes the 16th European Union country to embrace marriage equality and the first Orthodox Christian nation to do so. The country made ‘civil partnerships’ legal in 2015, but that stopped short of full parental rights. https://twitter.com/PrimeministerGR/status/1758245681863483800 From the New York Times:

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis had pledged to pass the new measures after his landslide re-election last year. He told his cabinet last month that same-sex marriage was a matter of equal rights, noted that similar legislation was in place in more than 30 other countries, and said that there should be no “second-class citizens” or “children of a lesser God.”

In addition to recognizing same-sex marriages, the legislation clears the way for adoption and gives the same rights to both same-sex parents as a child’s legal guardian, whereas to date such rights have applied only to the biological parent.

The law does not provide same-sex couples with access to assisted reproduction or the option of surrogate pregnancies. It also does not give transgender people rights as parents.

Read more at the New York Times. https://twitter.com/thrasherxy/status/1758245330976374972 https://twitter.com/AP/status/1758247141825196286