“If the law is approved by the Constitutional Court, LGBTQ education will officially enter our schools, with messages of gender reassignment and gender selection, which is a serious trauma of lots of people in many countries. Because adolescents are being severely abused, because girls are simply given hormone therapy and have their breasts cut off, and even doctors are resisting this,” Metka Zevnik, co-leader of the coalition “It’s About Children!” and leader of the Association of Grandparents pointed out on the show “Tema dneva” (Topic of the Day).
The Constitutional Court will consider the appeal against the decision of the National Assembly of the inadmissibility of the call for a referendum on the Family Code on a priority basis, which means that the appeal was filed in time and in full. In the constitutional complaint, the coalition also argues for the disqualification of the three Constitutional Court judges. State Secretary Simon Maljevac sees the move as an attempt to score political points. Co-founder of the coalition “It’s About the Children!” and leader of the Association of Grandparents, Metka Zevnik, reiterated the reasons for the appeal and what will happen if it is rejected.
“A complaint was sent to the Constitutional Court by the representatives of the LGBT community, including the Ombudsman for Equality, Miha Lobnik, who is an LGBT activist himself. They sent this article and the Code to the Court, saying that it was unconstitutional, and the Constitutional Court wrote a decision and thus allowed marriage to be a union of two persons and the adoption of children to be possible for them, and that is how the law was subsequently drafted. This all happened very quickly, but the amendment was adopted under the fast-track procedure, which we examined and found that the law now significantly exceeds the Constitutional Court’s decision, so we asked for a constitutional review,” Zevnik explained.
Children could become a market commodity
Aleš Primc and Zevnik believe that the whole thing was adopted too quickly, which is why they also pointed out procedural reasons against it, as there was a violation of process and substance. In one of the points, they did follow the Constitutional Court’s decision, but the concept was changed very substantially, as it opens up very counter-constitutional segments in terms of content. “I can point out that the Code refers to the conception of the family,” explains Zevnik, pointing out that here the legal possibility is opened up for single women to be artificially inseminated and for men to introduce surrogacy, which means that children become a marketable commodity, which is forbidden.
It is unacceptable that grandparents have no rights
“The LGBTQ community claims that there are more than a hundred genders and that one’s gender can change daily, so which persons does the law even apply to, then?” Zevnik is wondering, also referring to Article 35 of the Constitution, which gives a child the right to know about his or her origins, which will be impossible under the new law. Only the adoption rights of adults are now superior to the rights of children, which is not in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The legislator could also have placed grandparents as adoptive parents in this case, yet under this law, grandparents are left out, and not only that, but it is not even an option and is impermissible under the law, Zevnik was appalled.
Metka Zevnik said that it was the Left party (Levica) that had drafted the law and, in her opinion, the experience from abroad, where similar legislation had been introduced, showed that it had caused great harm to children and families, and that the unconstitutionality of the law was also due to the abolition of the constitutional right to conscientious objection of educators, teachers, registrars, and social service employees.
“If the law is approved by the Constitutional Court, LGBTQ education will officially enter our schools, with messages of gender reassignment and gender selection, which is a serious trauma of lots of people in many countries. Because adolescents are being severely abused, because girls are simply given hormone therapy and have their breasts cut off, and even doctors are resisting this,” Metka Zevnik, co-leader of the coalition “It’s About Children!” and leader of the Association of Grandparents pointed out on the show “Tema dneva” (Topic of the Day).
The amendments to the Family Code were adopted by the National Assembly in October, after a suspensive veto, following a Constitutional Court ruling that allowed same-sex partners to marry and gave them the possibility for social work centres to assess the suitability of same-sex couples for adopting children according to the same criteria as they use for heterosexual couples. The amended definition of marriage and the regulation of cohabitation for both same-sex and heterosexual partners would also put the partners in these unions on an equal footing in all the legal consequences provided for in the Family Code, as well as in other areas of law.
“I want to protect myself, my siblings, and also my future children.”
However, at the March Against the Family Code, people who believe that the family should remain traditional because this is the right and natural thing to do and who are strongly critical of the government, which is working to the detriment of families, also expressed their support for the fight against the new amendments to the Family Code. Among others, one girl said that she came to the rally because she wanted to “protect myself, my siblings, and also my future children.”
“They forwarded our appeal to the National Assembly and the government, and we got a 27-page reply saying that we have eight days to respond. The process is ongoing, and the Constitutional Court judges will decide on this,” said Zevnik, adding that “the Coalition for Children believes that the law cannot introduce inequalities where nature had not created them.”
Ana Horvat
