President to Decide on Anti-Gay Referendum

The so-called Alliance for Family have been pushing to get a referendum as part of their ongoing campaign to protect their notion of family in Slovakia, after the Constitutional Court cleared the way for it to go ahead.

The Alliance would pose three basic questions to the people of Slovakia if President Andrej Kiska gives the thumbs up to the referendum. It initially wanted to ask four questions, but the question on registered partnerships was rejected on Tuesday by the Constitutional Court as unconstitutional after President Kiska challenged the questions.

Now the buck passes back to President Kiska, who could endorse the referendum with the remaining three questions. Basically, the questions ask whether same sex couples should not be banned from adopting and then bringing up kids, whether marriage should be exclusively a union of one man and one woman and whether parents should be able to prevent their children from taking part in lessons on sexual behaviour and euthanasia in schools.

SME daily cites head of the sexual minorities initiative Inakost, Martin Macko, as being disappointed the Constitutional Court didn’t rule the whole referendum as unconstitutional. “The hidden intention of the organisers is, among other things, to limit access of a part of the population to the legal institute of marriage, adoption and registered partnerships, which come under the right to privacy and a family life, and so set this status in concrete for the future”.

According to estimates of the Interior Ministry, the referendum would cost over 5 million euros and could be organised within 60 days of the President’s green light. If the referendum were to go ahead, some might say it is just an expensive display of homophobia.