By John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney–
In late September, voters in Switzerland supported the freedom to marry by a nearly 2–1 margin in a nationwide referendum, making that nation the 30th country in the world with marriage equality. Over a billion people worldwide now live in nations with marriage equality. Swiss weddings will begin in July 2022.
ILGA-Europe Advocacy Director Katrin Hugendubel termed the vote “a huge achievement,” remarking to Euronews that “it’s been a very long process following the tireless efforts of activists over the years.” Indeed, it was a needlessly long struggle to make Switzerland the 17th nation in Europe with equal marriage rights. Back in 2013, public polling showed over 60 percent of Swiss people supported the freedom to marry, with that number soaring to over 80 percent by 2020. But conservative political interests were able to stall progress for years. When the Swiss government finally enacted marriage equality in late 2020, opponents collected sufficient signatures to put the matter to voters in this fall’s referendum.
The Swiss election brought back painful memories of Proposition 8. We in California know all too well the cost of putting our basic civil rights up to a popular vote. Like the Yes on 8 campaign of 13 years ago, the anti-equality Swiss campaign used cruel, exclusionary slogans such as, “Yes to marriage and family – No to marriage for everyone,” to try to sway voters. We were delighted and gratified that Swiss voters emphatically rejected that message, and instead embraced same-sex couples and LGBTIQ equality.
The Swiss success now makes neighboring Italy the only major Western European nation without marriage equality. Although Italy enacted civil unions in 2016, progress toward equal marriage rights and full LGBTIQ equality faces major challenges there because of the outsized influence the Vatican and other very conservative interests play in the country. Just last week, the Vatican and those interests successfully pressured the Italian Senate to reject legislation that would have made violence against LGBTIQ people, as well as women and disabled people, a hate crime. The Independent characterized the Vatican’s efforts as “unprecedented.”
Reuters reported that “the Vatican feared that the law could lead to the criminalization of the Church in Italy for refusing to conduct gay marriages, for opposing adoption by homosexual couples, or refusing to teach gender theory in Catholic schools.” Perhaps the Vatican doth protest too much with its overstated argument. Indeed, many may consider the Vatican’s long history of anti-LGBTIQ attitudes, edicts, and actions to be “criminal” in a rhetorical sense.
It would not be the first time the Catholic Church and criminality would be closely linked in recent times. Just last month, an independent French commission issued a 2,500-page report, finding that French Catholic clergy had sexually abused approximately 216,000 minors since 1950 in what it termed a “massive phenomenon,” kept hidden by a “veil of silence.” The commission’s head described the Church as having maintained “profound and even cruel indifference” for what it had done.
In response, the Pope expressed his “sadness and pain for the trauma” the victims had suffered. He declared: “It is also my shame, our shame, for the inability of the Church for too long to put them at the center of its concerns.”
The phrase “profound and even cruel indifference” could also describe the Vatican’s attitude toward LGBTIQ people in Italy and around the world. Just as the Catholic clergy’s sexual abuse has had long-lasting repercussions for their victims, the Catholic Church’s anti-LGBTIQ religious and political rhetoric and actions have devastating consequences on countless LGBTIQ people. We long for the day when a Pope expresses his “sadness and pain for the trauma” the Church has inflicted on queer people and speaks of his “shame” and the Church’s collective shame for all the harm it has perpetrated against LGBTIQ people.
We are confident that the Italian LGBTIQ movement will persevere. And we celebrate the message and promise of the marriage equality movement: “Love Wins.” LGBTIQ Swiss and millions of their supporters made that dream come true in Switzerland in September in a vote ILGA’s Hugendubel assures “resonates across borders.” Switzerland now joins Ireland as the second nation to enact marriage equality resoundingly through a nationwide vote. We know that love will continue to win elsewhere as long as our community continues to keep those words and their promise as our loadstar.
John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for over three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. Their leadership in the grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA contributed in 2015 to making same-sex marriage legal nationwide.
Published on November 4, 2021
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