The Catholic Church in Lithuania is against a group of lawmakers’ proposal to legalize same-sex partnerships in Lithuania, claiming that such a move would “degrade the family concept”, a representative of the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference says.
“The law some Seimas members want to legalize would make the moral nature of family relations insignificant for the state,” Reverend Darius Trijonis, assistant secretary general of the Lithuanian Bishops’ Conference, told to Lithuanian news agency BNS on the 26th of March, 2015.
In his words, the Church “blesses marital love between a man and woman and not between two men or two women.”
By adopting the proposed Law on Partnership, which would allow homosexual and heterosexual couples enter into a partnership, “the state would send an unequivocal message to the public that moral commitments are not necessary for becoming a family.”
“Putting the partnership model alongside a family washes out the fundamental elements of the family structure, making the family the basis of the society and the state,” Reverend Trijonis said.
Nine Lithuanian lawmakers representing the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania and the Liberal Movement registered a bill on legalizing same-sex partnerships on the 25th of March, 2015.
Based on the 2011 census figures, 77 percent of Lithuanian residents consider themselves Roman Catholics.
