The first same-sex couple to get married in Greece has already published their wedding notice on a newspaper as required by law and thus just hours after the Parliament passed the legislation late on Thursday. A legislation that was met with the resistance of a large part of the Greek society and even lawmakers of the ruling and opposition parties.
LGBTI rights activists Stavros Gavriliadis and Dimitris Elefsiniotis are going to get married in the city Hall of Nea Smyrni suburb of south Athens as soon as possible.
Speaking to Skai TV, deputy mayor of Nea Smyrni, Konstantinos Anagnostopoulos, who will perform the wedding, said that the date was not known yet. He stressed that the regulation came to cover a legal gap and he expressed the assumption that other same-sex couples will follow.
At the gallery of the parliament Elefsiniotis and Gavriliadis applaud the passing of the law with other members of the LGBTI community late on Thursday.
“Our suits and wedding rings are already ready,” allergist Gavriliadis told Bloomberg. “Maybe we’ll be the first to get married” in Greece.
For more than 20 years, Stavros Gavriliadis and Dimitrios Elefsiniotis have shared a common life. They bought a house and started a family. But until yesterday they could not marry and were not recognized as the parents of their three children.
The Greek parliament voted on Thursday for equality in the marriage of same-sex couples and thus Stavros and Dimitris will have equal rights with the 10.5 million citizens of the country.
The new law means the 52-year-old allergist will no longer have to worry about his son’s fate if he dies before his partner Dimitris, or if he is allowed to pick up his (non-biological) twin children from school. The five of them will finally be considered a family – and not “strangers”, noted Gavrieliadis.
Rights activists say the new law does not go far enough because it does not allow same-sex couples to have children through surrogacy. The EU is trying to harmonize legislation across it to tackle this problem, but is facing resistance from countries such as Italy and Hungary, where their governments marginalize their LGBTI communities. With Greece, 16 of the 27 member states now recognize same-sex marriage.
This change has been in the works for a long time, Bloomberg reports. Rights activists began pushing for it in earnest in 2008, when a civil union pact was enacted that excluded LGBTI people. It took another seven years for the cohabitation agreement to become open to all Greeks, under the left-wing government of Alexis Tsipras.
Gavriliadis commented to Bloomberg that the new law is a welcome solution to his family’s problems. After the wedding, he will officially adopt Dimitris’ twins and Dimitris will adopt his son.
“We will finally be a family with two surnames,” he said. The law “honors freedom, equality, love, our dignity and ensures the rights of our children” Stavros Gavriliadis stressed.
Cheering crowds outside the Parliament on Thursday – via efsyn.gr
