The fight against the erasure of the foundations of society will continue

On Thursday, the Saeima blocked the third reading of the Civil Union Law, but this does not mean that the issue is off the table. It will be put back on the agenda again and again, trying to get it through by whatever means.

Listening to some activists moaning about a “constitutional crisis” and calling not only on our President, but also on foreign diplomats and politicians to get involved in pushing the issue forward, one may wonder: what is all the fuss about?

Formally, the question is really quite mundane. It is about the possibility for two people to register a “civil union”, bypassing the existing forms of marriage registration. The draft law provides that "a civil union is an agreement notarially concluded between two natural persons of legal age, which regulates certain rights and obligations of property and non-property between them". In other words, if you don't want to go to a civil registry office or a church, go to a notary and register your... Yes, what exactly do you register at a notary? Civil union, family, marriage?

You could say: what difference does it make what they call your living together? Marriage, family, cohabitation, partnership, civil union or whatever? How can one split hairs over such "trifles"? But I put the word "trifles" in quotation marks for a reason, because in a broader, socio-anthropological or even philosophical sense, these are not trifles at all. What is more, this issue is one of the cornerstones of society.

The answer to the question of whether or not marriage, the family and the associated creation of children (social succession) are the foundations of society also determines attitudes towards all these "partnership" things. If we believe that marriage and family are just a matter of who sleeps with whom, then we have one attitude (the state shouldn't creep into everyone’s bed), but if we believe that it is something more serious (the basis of a structured society), then we have another.

I should add that there is an additional issue here: are marriage, family, partnership related or unrelated to the creation of children and the succession of society? If childbearing and family are mutually exclusive, as is often the case in today's reality, then why can't many other things be called and recognized as a family? What is the role of the institution of marriage in the social construct? What is its impact on the qualitative as well as the quantitative reproduction of society, and is it worth worrying about at all? These, then, are supposedly the key questions of the problem, but again we have to use the word "supposedly", because, in an ideological struggle, reasonable and logical arguments work poorly. Loud, emotionally powerful slogans are much more effective.

Oh, the words that were thrown around on social networks after the Saeima session in which the Civil Union Law was blocked. The miserable homophobes, the alternatively gifted, were the most gentle ones. But this is nothing new in this sphere. Anyone who dares to oppose the undermining of the institution of the family, of marriage, is automatically branded with various derogatory labels. If you deny a couple the opportunity to marry, to call themselves a family, then (in the interpretation of these ideologues) you are doing it only out of malice, out of hatred, out of your resentment towards the whole world. At best, out of stupidity or backwardness, but even then, your "homophobia" is driven by hatred of all that is good and bright. This has been the main "argument" of the pushers of this bill for many years.

In such a situation, as soon as the opponents of the bill start talking about specific wordings, legal inaccuracies, the words - hate, homophobia, evil - are said in return. If someone starts talking about the socio-anthropological significance of the institution of marriage, the answer is astonishingly simple, not to say childish: but Denmark has legalized same-sex marriage for more than twenty years, and nothing bad has happened. It is childish, because only a child can consider a period of twenty years as a serious, meaningful benchmark for a socio-anthropological question.

In yesterday's article I mentioned complaining to the world as one of the methods of this fight. On social networks, people write in English about how "backwards" and "hateful" the Latvian Parliament is. One of the most prominent activists of the left, Selma Levrence, started talking about a constitutional crisis, and she was not the only one. The aim was one: to give momentum to the rainbow internationality and to unleash the wave that is one of their most common methods of action.

A hundred years ago there was an organization of the left in Latvia - the SSS - Strādnieks, Sports un Sargs (Worker, Sport and Guard). Sport - mostly boxing and other combat forms, and the Guard - groups capable of fighting, who could use physical force to influence their opponents - the bourgeois. Now fighting in the streets is no longer necessary. It is enough to create ideologically resistant groups on social networks which, at the right moment, unleash a wave to morally crush or bash whoever the leaders of these groups (often clear sociopaths) have chosen as their victim. In English, this is known as mobbing.

It is ironic that the party most actively involved in mobbing in Latvia is the one whose Health Minister, Daniels Pavļuts, calls for a reduction in bullying at school. But it is his party, which pharisaically accuses others of spreading hatred, which itself demonstrates a marked aversion (hatred, in fact) for everything Latvian, for the normal, natural family. They derisively call national-minded people "garter-wearers", but when they see a poster of a mother and father with more than two children, they are ready to literally snarl. Why some people are so disgusted by the words “family” and “marriage”, some even by “children”, is a question worthy of serious study, but the Society Integration Foundation, which is under the umbrella of the same party, does not award grants for such topics. Nor do international sponsors give money for such studies.

In the absence of studies, we are left to conclude that this hatred is caused by their own deficiency. If a person does not have something, has never had something, then he unconsciously feels dislike towards those who have it and who hold it in high esteem. The one who has not known love (or has been hurt by it) mocks love, does not believe in it and calls those who are in love fools. So do the mockers of national ideas and family values.

As for the draft law in question, the first sentence of its annotation states that it is necessary to remedy the incompatibility of the Labor Law with Article 110 of the Constitution, as found by the Constitutional Court. In particular, Section 155(1) of the Labor Law does not provide for support for the mother's female partner in the event of the birth of a child. If anyone has caused the constitutional crisis, it is the Constitutional Court, which, in its judgment of November 12, 2020, has usurped legislative functions and has basically reinterpreted Article 110 of the Constitution.

This reinterpretation was not based on substantive arguments, but on formal linguistic loopholes. Any court, no matter at what level, must give a fair judgment. That is, on the merits. Using formal, often conceptually absurd arguments to prove a point may be legally permissible, but it is not a sign of high quality of justice.

In the judgment of the Constitutional Court in question, Article 110 of the Constitution is reinterpreted in a way that is absolutely contrary to its meaning. On what basis can this be said? Because this Article as it stands has only recently appeared, in 2006, and the adoption of this Article is still well remembered by all those who are over the age of 30. Everyone knows very well what the reason was for adopting this Article; who proposed it and what the idea was. So to say now, only 15 years after its adoption, that this Article means the exact opposite of what it meant in 2006 is the purest impertinence and legal casuistry.

Unfortunately, a large number of lawyers (probably for fear of the aforementioned mobbing) pretend not to understand what is going on and nod their heads obediently, saying that marriage is one thing and the family quite another. They tell us with straight faces that the Constitution talks about marriage, but here we are talking about the family and so on and so forth. Moreover, they are not only pretending, but they are trying to give the impression to the public that that is what law is - to prove that white is black and black is white, depending on which side you are on. Unfortunately, many people have exactly that impression of lawyers, as people whose job it is not to be on the side of justice, but to find a formal loophole in every case to latch onto, just to prove that walking on your hands is more useful than walking on your feet.

So, to answer the question posed at the beginning of the article - what is the fuss about - when you try to tell people that it is perfectly normal to give paternity pay to a mother's girlfriend, the sane part of them says: no, it is not normal. It washes away the foundations of our society - the family. That is what all the fuss is about.