Same-sex partnership debate in Estonia: battle for egalitarian and liberal values

Posted: June 16th, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Estonia, human rights | No Comments »

On Wednesday, the Estonian parliament Riigikogu will consider the draft partnership act, which will be gender-neutral. It will thus offer protection of law for same-sex couples and their children as well as different-sex couples who have opted not to get married. It would be the first time* a country that used to be in the Soviet Union would offer recognition for same-sex couples. If passed in the first reading, there will be second reading in September and law will hopefully pass before the end of the year for the law to become in force from 1 January 2015.

The draft law was submitted by 40 Members of Parliament out of 101, belonging to three of the four parties in Riigikogu. The only parliamentary party against this is the conservative IRL, but some prominent members of that party have also supported the law, while some members of the other parties have been against. The government of Estonia has stated that they support the law, although this was not a part of the coalition agreement. In terms of popular support, same-sex partnerships are supported by roughly half of the population while the other half is against, which is not so bad for a country in which homosexual acts were criminal acts 25 years ago.

There are some specific reasons why the window of opportunity exists. In Spring, the government changed in Estonia as a result of preparing for the parliamentary elections next Spring. In order to improve the image of the party, the Reform party switched out their prime minister and their coalition partner: the anti-LGBT IRL was replaced with pro-LGBT Social Democrats. As the partnership act had been in consideration for a long time already, IRL being in government holding it up, the obstacle was removed and the draft was to go forward.

The strategy of those for the law has been remarkably peaceful and quiet. There has been very little coordination and a number of messages have been used by different parties. The members of parliament who have initiated the act, have downplayed the significance of same-sex partnerships, focusing instead on those different-sex couples who live together, but have not married. There are more than 100 000 of these couples as marriage is not particularly popular among Estonians. When LGB angle has been brought up, this has been communicated as a part of Western values that we have to accept unless we want to be under Russian influence. LGB equality has not been among the main arguments brought forward and although there has been a huge number of supporting opinions for the law from various NGOs and groups (such as a feminist Facebook group), there has not been any demonstrations and even the annual Baltic Pride, which took place in Estonia two weeks ago, did not see any substantial controversy (it also lacked the basic Pride march).

Those against same-sex partnerships have been more organised and their messages have been better coordinated. The main antagonists are the Foundation for Protection of Family and Tradition (Sihtasutus Perekonna ja Traditsiooni Kaitseks, SAPTK), headed by Varro Vooglaid, the Estonian Council of Churches and its member organisations and the conservative IRL party as well as the more far-right EKRE party (which is not in the parliament currently). There are also some populist politicians from other parties that have opposed the law.

SAPTK has tried all types of direct and less direct actions to influence and intimidate people as well as parliamentarians, including gathering signatures (they managed to collect more than 40 000, which is considerable for a population of 1,3 million), publishing a booklet called “The Lies of the Homosexual Propaganda”, making weekly videos, organising a Facebook group, mass-emailed all members of parliament, etc. They refuse to publish their sources of funding, and a few years ago their leader Varro Vooglaid was involved with bringing a well-known anti-gay activist Paul Cameron to Estonia.

SAPTK does not make a secret of the fact that it seeks to spread a rather extreme form of traditional catholicism, which is based on the ideology of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, a Brasilian intellectual who founded the international movement Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). The basic ideology of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira is expressed in the book “Revolution and Counterrevolution”, which has been translated to Estonian by SAPTK and which basically sees the protestant reformation, the Enlightenment and French revolution as well as Communism destructive to societal values, calling for a traditionalist counter-revolution to stop egalitarian and liberal developments and re-impose a hierarchical, sacral and austere social order that dates back not decades but centuries. It is somewhat paradoxical how in the least religious country in Europe, a group that follows this kind of fringe ideology has gathered a substantial number of supporters.

The basic arguments used for and against same-sex partnerships are centered around the definition of family. In Estonia family, unlike marriage, is not defined in law and different laws consider families to include different types of families. Following some recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights, the majority of the legal experts in the field (including the Chancellor of Justice) have adopted a view that same-sex couples can enjoy a ‘family life’ and this means that the Estonian Constitution requires that same-sex families must be afforded some kind of legal protection by the state. This argument is based on the prevailing egalitarian and liberal values and laws that the TFP movement tries to fight against.

Therefore, one can say that non-religious Estonia has surprisingly ended up as one of the battlegrounds between two very different ideologies: one that is extremely socially conservative and the other based on the Enlightenment values. Surely one of the reasons why there is a lot of resistance to the draft law is that homophobic attitudes are still present in the society, which SAPTK has successfully channeled to achieve their goals. For some, homophobia has trumped their distrust of organized religion, for others it is really the lack of contact and understanding of who LGBT people are, because there has not been and still is no wide-spread awareness-raising among the majority of people living in Estonia. The natural distrust of government and the extraordinary way that the draft partnership law has been introduced by its proponents, has probably created a more fertile ground for SAPTK. There are no other forces countering their fieldwork, as pro-parternship law NGOs and groups prefer to work on lobbying and not so much in the grassroots level. The only grassroots organising indirectly supporting the law has been a Facebook page called “thank you, but my traditional family does not need protection” that was created a few days ago and already has ca 10 000 followers (compared to less than 4 000 for SAPTK page).

It remains to be seen if the partnership law will be adopted, I think it will be, but there are a number of lessons to learn from what has been happening and for the wider equality debate. It shows that there are still a lot of people who do not consider liberalism in the wider sense and egalitarianism as shared values.  Even though SAPTK may lose this time, the process has radicalised and focused the forces working against the further entrenchment of these liberal and egalitarian values. It should not be taken for granted that everyone in Estonia shares these values and more work should be done to explain why these values are important in the grassroots level, an opportunity that has not been used very well in the context of the debate surrounding the partnership act.

* Currently, limited legal protection is already available in Estonia for same-sex partners of citizens of other EU Member States who are not EU citizens, based on the Citizen of European Union Act.



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