National LGBT rights organization’s LGL human rights policy coordinator, Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius:
“In order to avoid any misinterpretations of the presented arguments I want to underline two facts. First of all, according to Article 38 of The Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania “Marriage shall be concluded upon the free mutual consent of man and woman.” In other words, same sex marriages can only become legal if two thirds of Parliament members would vote twice to change the Constitutional amendment to “marriage shall be concluded upon the free mutual consent of two persons”. Second of all, the Constitutional Court of Republic of Lithuania, in 2011 clarified that “constitutional family concept can not only derive from marriage between a man and a woman (that is only one of many familial relation forms), but also from other forms of partnership and cohabitation. The Constitution of the Republic of Lithuania does not explicitly say that same sex couples do not constitute a family. It remains valid until two thirds of Parliament members decide differently”.
