Today is a day of victory and a day of some moral vindication for all that the LGBTI community has suffered, said New Left special counsel Efi Ahtsioglou in the debate on the marriage equality bill.

“And while today is a day of partial vindication, the following paradox occurs. The bill will become law only if sections of the opposition also vote for it. And this shows something essential for the ruling party. That it is a deeply conservative faction, which cannot follow social changes and developments in issues as basic as human rights”, said Ms. Ahtsioglou and added: “Unfortunately, it is not that with this bill New Democracy is making any progressive turn or that it shows Mr. Mitsotakis is a progressive person. None of this happens. You cannot speak of progress when you have reduced the rule of law to such insignificance and such unprecedented disrepute. You cannot talk about progress, when a few days ago the European Parliament condemned the government, condemned the country, with a large majority, for the violations in human rights, with the wreck of Pylos, with the violations in the freedom of the press, for the violations regarding the protection of journalists”.

This bill, insisted the New Left special shopper, “will not wash away this political shame” and emphasized that the government cannot talk about the protection of women, when for 4.5 years, it refuses to legislate femicide, that is, it refuses to give visibility to the cause that leads dozens of women to abuse and death, which is the patriarchal structure of Greek society. He also said that the government cannot even talk about protecting children, when it has let baby milk reach 200% above the prices that exist in Europe, when it cuts the Collective Labor Agreements, which provide for the marriage and child allowance, when he cuts 30,000 kids from public universities and now tells them to go to private and when he broadcasts live nationwide, the address and details of the abused girl in Colonos.

“This is the petty political attitude. Although our position was petty politics, and not a position of principle, we should not have voted in favor of the bill. But we in the New Left do not operate with micro-politics. We proceed from a position of principle and in our opinion, this bill concerns two things, for which there is a position of principle and that is why it must be voted on. One thing is recognition of a self-evident human right and the second thing it concerns is equality,” said Efi Ahtsioglou.

“Those who deny the recognition of this marriage, of same-sex couples, do so because you consider the relationship of same-sex persons morally objectionable, because you consider it of inferior moral quality,” he commented on critics of the bill, and the “false” claims that the bill will harm the interests of children.