The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that no right to same-sex “marriage” can be imposed by the EU on member states, and that to say otherwise would be a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Court said in a ruling in Strasbourg on July 16 that the Convention cannot be interpreted “as imposing an obligation” on states that are signatories to the treaty “to grant same-sex couples access to marriage.”
Although the Court had previously found no such right exists in the Convention, it went further in its latest ruling, stating that in Article 12 the treaty “enshrines the traditional concept of marriage as being between a man and a woman [and] cannot be construed as imposing an obligation on the Contracting States to grant access to marriage to same-sex couples.”
In addition, it found that no consensus in favour of same-sex “marriage” exists in Europe because only ten of the 47 signatories to the Convention have legalised it.
While the ruling still leaves it up to signatory countries to decide what form marriage should take in their legal systems, the Dublin-based Iona Institute said the Court’s decision “makes it harder for campaigners to argue that same-sex “marriage” is a ‘fundamental right’, let alone ‘the civil rights issue of this generation’” – a phrase used by Ireland’s former foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore.
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