New Democracy MP Marios Salmas said he will vote against the marriage equality bill because he disagrees with same-sex couples’ right to want to have and adopt children.

“I believe that the draft law that we are discussing today (s.s.: yesterday Wednesday) worries society. Society is not worried because it is affected materially, but it is worried as if it is affected. What is affected? It is the fundamental principle of society which is the values, the ideals, the principles with which this society, the Greek society, was created,” he said.

“The rules that this bill changes are rules that the state is stepping on, Greek society is stepping on and that’s why they are worried, they are rules that have remained unchanged for more than 2.5 thousand years, and that we are quickly coming to change them and with consequences that we don’t know what they will be”, continued Mr. Salmas.

“I will not vote for this draft law, I will vote against it with complete peace of mind. I respect all citizens, homosexuals, heterosexuals, gays, I respect that they should have equal rights with everyone, there should be no racism, based on gender and sexualities. I disagree with them wanting to have and adopt children. Because that’s what it’s about. The rest was regulated by the Coexistence Pact”, said the ND MP and added: “Nobody asked me for it. I have tens of thousands of voters, in the 24 years that I have been an MP. One didn’t ask me. I have gay friends, acquaintances. One didn’t tell me ‘fix me the right to be able to have children’. So I can’t figure out who asked for it. And since, quite coincidentally in 2022 the president of the USA signed for gay marriage, I wonder how suddenly, after thousands of years of human existence on earth, it opened in the USA, in other countries and it opens here? Random? Let me say that it is not accidental, and since I do not know who asked for it and why they asked for it, I cannot consent.’

“I, by law of the state, to change the law of nature, I cannot, I will not do it,” said Mr. Salmas and added: “because we cut so much, with a special cross-party consensus, for the rights of these people of the LGBTI community, I didn’t see that we have the same interest in children’s rights, because we have to promote these too, for the children who are in institutions, the children who are born and abandoned, who grow up to one year old in the Alexandra hospital ward. The political system, for decades, along with the lengthy court proceedings, cannot solve the issue of how these children will grow up in heterosexual families, who are interested in adopting them by the thousands.”

The draft law is not in accordance with society, said the ND MP and added: “I chose to vote against and not to abstain from voting, because in my life everything I believe is right, I fight for it to be implemented and everything “What’s wrong, I’m fighting to prevent it from happening,” added Marios Salmas.