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ROMANIA
Legalizing homosexuality
Orthodox resist international pressure
The Romanian Orthodox Church has said it would petition the government not to decriminalize homosexual acts as part of efforts to gain entry into the European Union, which requires members to lift such bans.
“Our Church does not say a sexual minority should be sent to jail,” Archbishop Nifon said after a two-day meeting of the Church’s Synod, whose discussions included the issue of homosexuality. “But we must speak out loudly against sin.”
“Everybody should know that homosexuality is a sin against religious, and against family and social values, which are at the core of our Church,” Archbishop Casian told a press conference.
The Orthodox Church, to which 87 percent of Romanians belong, teaches that homosexuality, which has been illegal in Romania since 1968, runs counter to Christian values. The Romanian parliament voted in June to decriminalize homosexuality, but they maintained terms of up to five years in jail for certain sexual activities, including “abnormal practices, oral and anal sex,” if performed in public.
Nifon said the Church Synod had decided to ask President Emil Constantinescu not to sign those changes into law should the Senate also vote to decriminalize homosexuality.
Homosexual activist groups later said they are asking a European quasi-governmental organization to apply pressure to Romania to decriminalize homosexuality.
The International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA), which held a European conference in the Romanian capital, said the country’s government had failed to live up to promises to bring its laws in line with the rest of Europe as part of its efforts to join the European Union. “We will be requesting the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe to re-introduce the monitoring of Romania to ensure that it meets the human rights obligations that it has undertaken,” Nigel Warner, the ILGA’s co-delegate to the council, told reporters.
In 1997, the Council stopped monitoring Romania after the former Communist country made some legal reforms and gave Romania one year to amend the legislation on homosexuality.
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