The Chamber of Deputies refused to amend the law to allow same-sex marriage, instead approving only same-sex ‘partnerships’ with limited rights.
According to the new amendment, same-sex couples in the Czech Republic can enter into a civil partnership with most of the legal marriage rights – such as joint property, widow and widower pensions, etc. However, the act will not be called marriage and will restrict the adoption of children by same-sex couples.
“Marriage for all couples was not accepted. It is a sad day for thousands of families with children who have two moms or two dads and hundreds of thousands of LGBT people. It is a sad day for justice and equality in our country,” Czech non-profit initiative “Jsme fér” (‘We are fair’), which campaigns for full equality for LGBT people, wrote on X in response to Wednesday’s vote.
The amendment allows one partner to co-adopt the other partner’s child, whether biological or adopted, from care. For children adopted by a same-sex partner, this would mean that they would have to go through the adoption process with the first parent, who would then receive full parental rights as an individual and then go through the same process again to be co-adopted by the parent’s partner.
Jsme fér argues that such a process could cause psychological distress to the child and the whole family. It would also create an administrative burden for the state and the courts.
The bill now goes to the Czech Senate, the upper chamber of the Czech parliament.
The resulting vote is seen as a compromise between liberal politicians – namely STAN (unaffiliated) and Pirates (Greens/EFA), who demanded equal rights for same-sex couples, and conservative politicians – such as ODS (ECR) and KDU-ČSL (EPP), who rejected such changes.
“I am upset that we have not achieved true equality! But we are not giving up, we will keep fighting. One day we will succeed,” Czech European Affairs Minister Martin Dvořák (STAN) wrote on X.
(Aneta Zachová | Euractiv.cz)
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