ISTANBUL (RNS) — At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Greek President Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced that legislation to allow same-sex couples to marry will be approved by the parliament in Athens by the middle of February. Citing his government’s support for equality but also “the rights of the children that already exist,” Mitsotakis called marriage for same-sex couples “a fact, it is reality, and ultimately I think that this must be the result of legislation of the Hellenic Parliament.”
But the bill is testing another longstanding reality in Greek public life: the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church, which is vociferously opposing the idea of legalizing marriage for anyone but traditional heterosexual couples.
“The bill abolishes not only rules of bioethics, Christian values and the Greek family tradition, but it overturns the rights of future children and gender roles as elements of the cohesion of society,” said a church statement Tuesday, after a meeting of its bishops called to voice their objections to the law.
The Greek constitution recognizes the Eastern Orthodox Church as the “prevailing religion” of the state, and several government departments, most prominently the Ministry of Education, are inextricably tied with the Orthodox hierarchy.
The Greek flag flies outside a Greek Orthodox Church in Santorini, Greece. Photo by iSAW Company/Unsplash/Creative Commons
But the bill itself is evidence that the church’s influence has waned in recent years, according to Thanasis Koukakis, a Greek journalist and scholar of theology who’s been cov …
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But the bill is testing another longstanding reality in Greek public life: the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church, which is vociferously opposing the idea of legalizing marriage for anyone but traditional heterosexual couples.
“The bill abolishes not only rules of bioethics, Christian values and the Greek family tradition, but it overturns the rights of future children and gender roles as elements of the cohesion of society,” said a church statement Tuesday, after a meeting of its bishops called to voice their objections to the law.
The Greek constitution recognizes the Eastern Orthodox Church as the “prevailing religion” of the state, and several government departments, most prominently the Ministry of Education, are inextricably tied with the Orthodox hierarchy.
The Greek flag flies outside a Greek Orthodox Church in Santorini, Greece. Photo by iSAW Company/Unsplash/Creative Commons
But the bill itself is evidence that the church’s influence has waned in recent years, according to Thanasis Koukakis, a Greek journalist and scholar of theology who’s been cov …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]