The Supreme Court on Friday declared previous regulations unconstitutional, according to which only heterosexual couples can marry and homosexual partners are not allowed to adopt children together. Effective immediately, same-sex couples were granted both rights.
The Constitutional Court said it gave Parliament six months to change the law. Until the unconstitutional situation is ended, marriage is a union between two people, regardless of their gender. In addition, same-sex partners living in a civil partnership are allowed to adopt children together under the same conditions as married spouses.
According to the Constitutional Court, the previous regulation violated the constitutional ban on discrimination. The decision that has now been made public had already been made in mid-June when the Supreme Court was dealing with constitutional complaints from two homosexual couples who had been refused marriage or inclusion on a list of applicants for adoption.
The Supreme Court argued that discrimination against homosexuals could not be justified either with the traditional meaning of marriage as a partnership or with the special protection of families. The decision does not diminish the importance of traditional marriage. “It just means that from now on, in addition to opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples can also marry.”
With regard to the adoption law for homosexual couples, the Constitutional Court emphasized that the principle of equal treatment also requires the harmonization of their legal status in the area of joint adoption. So far was in Slovenia only stepchild adoption was possible for homosexual couples. Now life partners should also be able to adopt a child together under the same conditions as married couples. The general exclusion of same-sex partners reduces the number of possible adoptive parents, which is contrary to the goal of the best interests of the child, according to the court.
In Slovenia Since 2016, homosexual civil partnerships are almost equivalent to marriage. For example, they have a maintenance obligation, a right to joint assets and health insurance, as well as a widow’s or widower’s pension. They were only denied the right to adopt and the right to artificial insemination. It was a political compromise after conservative parties and movements torpedoed two attempts to introduce “marriage for all” with referendums (2012 and 2015).
Source: Nachrichten
