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Loading ...Hungarian gays win partnership rights
05.12.2009 4:25pm EDT
(Budapest) Same-sex couples in Hungary will be able to register their relationships in a new domestic partner registry beginning July 1.
The legislation was signed into law by President Laszlo Solyom after winning passage in Parliament.Under the law partners must be over 18, live together and be financially interdependent. It will allow gay and lesbian couples to recognize partners as next of kin, provide for joint tax filing, allow partners to make decisions in health care, and assure inheritance, social security and pension rights.
It will not, however, allow same-sex couples to adopt or undergo fertility treatments, nor will it allow couples to share a common surname.
Last December, Hungary’s Constitutional Court overturned a similar law because it also would have allowed unmarried opposite-sex couples to register. The court in its ruling said the law would diminish the importance of marriage.
The ruling, however, said that a law allowing domestic partnerships for gay couples would not be unconstitutional – as long as it applied only to same-sex couples.
Gays and lesbians have had a difficult time in winning legal rights in Hungary.
Last year more than a dozen people were arrested during a disturbance by ultra-nationalists during Budapest’s pride march. Charges against all but four of the protestors who refused to obey a police order to disperse were dismissed. The judge hearing the case ruled that pelting marchers with eggs in a gay pride parade was protected free speech.
Police initially refused to grant gay pride organizers a parade permit but allowed a far right group permission to stage a counter protest.
In the days leading up to the parade two gay businesses in the city were firebombed.
In fact we have an “implicit” constitutional ban on gay marriage in Hungary. The HU constitution has a provision very similar to art. 29 of the Italian constitution, both protect familz and marriage. The HU const court interpreted this provision in 2 cases.
1) In the first case (1995) the court held that it is not unconstitutional to restrict marriage to opposite sex couples, but did not say that a legislative decision to open up marriage for same sex couples would be unconstitutional. So it seemed that the court held that it was up to the legislator to decide. To some extent this decision was similar to the NY Court of Appeals decision in Hernandez v Robles: there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but the legislature is free to allow same-sex marriage. (The religious right of course interprets this decision differently. In their reasoning, the const. court held that there is no const. right to same-sex marriage, so it follows that same-sex marriage is banned by the constitution. A rather strange conclusion, perhaps catholics should re-read the medieval scholastic treatises on logic.)
2) Then came the second case in 2007, when unfortunately the const. court ruled that same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. The court had to decide whether to allow a referendum on gay marriage or not. So the primary issue to be decided was whether a referendum can be held or not. Unfortunately this involved a ruling on the more substantial issue of whether same-sex marriage is constitutional or not.
So we kind of have a const. ban on gay marriage, although it is not explicitly in the constitution and a more open-minded court could revise and overrule the 2007 decision in future. Not likely in the near future of course.
Thx, I read them. I read LaRepubblica regularly, but never seen anything about this. I hope the procedure for amending the Italian constitution is not an easy one. In Hungary it can be done by 2/3 majority of the Parliament. Someone commented on the gay-forum.it that “Per ora 56 senatori non fanno una gran paura.” Spero che non ci saranno piu.