Marriage equality despite two lost referendums
Two referendums failed, then came the Constitutional Court: how Slovenia introduced marriage equality in 2023.
On 31 January 2023, an amendment to the law came into force in Slovenia that activists had been waiting for for a quarter of a century. The revised Family Code redefined marriage. It was no longer considered a life partnership of a man and a woman, but a life partnership of two people. Same-sex couples could marry and adopt children together.
The road there was long. As early as 1997, Tatjana Greif, on behalf of the association Škuc from Ljubljana, had asked the government to legally recognise same-sex couples. She could not have imagined at the time that it would take twenty-six years, she said later. Twice, opening marriage failed at the ballot box. In 2012, fifty-five per cent voted against it, and in 2015 as many as sixty-four per cent, each time on a low turnout.
The turning point came not through the people but through the Constitutional Court. In June 2022, it found that restricting marriage to a man and a woman and the ban on adoption violated the constitution. Parliament amended the law in the autumn. This time, a third referendum was ruled out. The Slovenian constitution does not allow referendums on laws that remedy an unconstitutionality concerning human rights.
Slovenia thus became the first country of the former Yugoslavia with full marriage equality. Existing registered partnerships could be converted into marriages within six months. Labour Minister Luka Mesec spoke of a big step for the whole country. A minority that had long been oppressed was now on the winning side.
Greif, by now a member of parliament herself, remained sober. Legal equality was not yet social equality, she said. The hard-won rights now had to be defended.