Almost two thirds of the Swiss spoke for the legalization of same-sex marriages on a national referendum. It is reported by BBC News .
A total of support for the introduction of a “marriage for all” system expressed 64 percent of the population. Thus, Switzerland has become the 30th country in the world who legalized same-sex marriages. According to the Minister of Justice of the country, Karin Keller-Sutter, the first marriage ceremonies will be held in July 2022.
Over the past 20 years, most Western European countries recognized same-sex marriages. However, in Switzerland, many important decisions are made to a nationwide vote. Since 2007, in Switzerland, homosexual and lesbian couples could officially register the so-called civil partnership. However, such status did not provide LGBT couples of all rights. In particular, they could not adopt unrelated children.
In December 2020, the country’s parliament approved “Marriage for All”, and also allowed to provide lesbian couple access to sperm banks. Representatives of the two parties of the Confederation – the Parliamentary Swiss People’s Party and the Conservative Federal Democratic Union were opposed to the initiative. They were insisted for holding a referendum. Now one-sex marriages are equal to ordinary.
July 13, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) demanded from Russia to introduce a legal procedure for recognizing same-sex family relations and called the existing ban on unfair. In turn, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharov paid attention to the fact that the 12th article The European Convention on Human Rights, regulating marriage issues, first of all, talks about men and women. The diplomat also emphasized that the Convention in such cases respects the national legislation of the countries, implying that the Russian state of the ECHR did not demonstrate this relationship.