SYRIZA: “We proposed legalising same-sex marriage a year before Mitsotakis”

SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ pledge to legalise same-sex marriage was made one year after their own proposal to the same effect.

The main opposition party noted that it tabled its proposal for legalising gay marriage and adoption rights in June 2022 “when Mitsotakis had said that ‘this is not the right time’.”

“[Together with the LGBTQI+ community, SYRIZA] will continue to exert pressure every day to see this necessary and self-evident step be immediately implemented,” the statement added.

Mitsotakis said he plans to legalise same-sex marriage during his second term in government.

“Same-sex marriage will happen at some point and it’s part of our strategy,” Mitsotakis was quoted as telling Bloomberg Television in an interview last Tuesday in Athens. “Greek society is much more ready and mature.”

Same-sex marriage is recognised across most of western Europe, but not in Italy and Greece where civil partnerships exist, along with most other EU members in eastern Europe.

Against opposition from the Greek Orthodox Church and political conservatives, same-sex civil unions were legalised in 2015 under a previous government led by leftist SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras, who recently lost by a wide margin to Mitsotakis and New Democracy in two separate electoral battles this year, prompting him to announce his resignation from the leadership.

In 2022, Greece, under Mitsotakis’ government, banned so-called conversion therapy for minors and repealed a ban on blood donations by gay men.

LGBT groups in Greece have long campaigned for members of their communities to have full family rights and sought the tougher enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.

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