The political cost of marriage equality

Public discourse in Greece is dominated by the argument that the government's effort to legislate marriage equality will carry a political cost. Careful analysis of the situation, however, leads to the opposite conclusion.

For a start, Greece is not inventing the cartwheel. Around the world, 36 countries have already legislated marriage equality, 39 have legislated adoption equality, and we can study their experience.

No country has regretted the decision - let alone reversed it. Public debate - no matter how intense ahead of legislation - concludes soon thereafter, as we saw also in this country with same-sex civil partnerships in 2015, and fostering by same-sex couples in 2018; these issues did not feature as electoral issues in 2019. Marriage equality is not a major issue of electoral division for the simple reason that it refers to the rights of minorities, which...