R.I.S.E. invites all members of society to get to know and connect with LGBTI families and their daily struggles arising from the lack of both legal recognition and social acceptance.

Personal stories allow to see the issues of family rights recognition through the eyes of LGBTI people and their loved ones while calling for development of the same standard of protection to all families.

Although the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania backs up the notion that the constitutional concept of family is based on long term emotional relationships, mutual understanding and similar ideas and thus is not specifically aimed at opposite-sex marriage, such developments have not resulted in any effective legislation yet.

Relevant Civil Code regulations reserves partnership institute specifically to opposite-sex couples, which currently makes Lithuania the only EU Member State with partnership regulation containing such discriminatory precondition.

R.I.S.E. strives to achieve a positive change in terms of a non-discriminatory portrayal of LGBT families among general population and improve awareness on compromised quality of life of LGBT families on a decision maker level.

Project is implemented by the National LGBT rights organization LGL (Lithuania), LGBT and their Friends Association Mozaika (Latvia); Love Does Not Exclude Association MNW (Poland), LGBTI Organization BILITIS (Bulgaria), Association ACCEPT (Romania), Iniciatíva Inakost (Slovakia).

Prepared as a part of the project “Raising awareness for Inclusive Societies to Embrace rainbow families in Europe (R.I.S.E.) which is implemented with the financial support of the Rights, Equality and Citizenship (REC) Programme of the European Union.
The content of this  publication represents the views of the author only and it is their sole responsibility; it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.