28 NGOs oppose initiative to ban same-sex marriages by changing Romania's Constitution

A total of 24 NGOs from Romania and four international human rights organizations have asked Romania's Constitutional Court (CCR) to reject the initiative that aims to amend the Constitution to only allow marriages between men and women. The Coalition for Family, which comprises 34 local NGOs and associations, has gathered three million signatures in support of this initiative. Romania's Orthodox Church has largely supported this initiative. The constitutional amendment proposition has been filed with the Romanian Senate on Monday, May 23, 2016. The Constitutional Court is to discuss the Coalition’s proposal and issue an opinion on Wednesday, July 20. The organizations that oppose this initiative claim that it is against constitutional provisions and international law standards, which Romania has undertaken to respect, according to Accept Association. Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, ILGA-Europe, and the European Commission on Sexual Orientation Law support the request of the human rights organizations in Romania. “Through our intervention, we ask the Constitutional Court to give a negative opinion to the initiative, thus ending a pointless and manipulative exercise that generates hate in the entire society,” said Romanita Iordache, Accept Association vice-president. According to her, the Coalition for Family’s approach is an abuse of law, because the family’s definition based exclusively on the marriage between man and woman for the purpose of procreation suppresses the right of LGBT people, and the Constitution can’t be amended in this direction. According to the current article in the Constitution, “the family is created through the free-willed marriage between spouses, their full equality and the right and duty of parents to ensure the upbringing, education, and instruction of children". The new proposed phrasing replaces “the free-willed marriage between spouses” with “the free-willed marriage between a man and a woman.” Romanian Orthodox priests gather signatures for Constitution amendment against same-sex marriages Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com