Portugal narrowly rejects gay adoption law
LISBON, Portugal, March 21, 2014 – A bill that proposed to legalize same-sex adoption was rejected Friday in Portugal’s Parliament by a narrow majority. The bill would have allowed one member of a same-sex partnership to adopt the child of the other.
In 2012, the government promised a “co-parenting” bill saying that “when two people of the same sex are married or cohabiting and one of them has parental responsibility for a minor, by blood or adoption, the spouse may adopt the minor.”
The bill was defeated by a center-right coalition in a vote of 112-107 with four abstentions. The same bill was passed at first reading in May 2013, but heavily opposed by the Church. At the same time a bill proposing full joint adoption was defeated in a 104-77 vote.
At the moment, homosexual individuals can adopt children in Portugal, but the same-sex “marriage” bill specifically prohibits joint same-sex adoption.
At the same time, the Portuguese Constitutional Court ruled on March 14 against a proposal of the Parliament to hold a referendum on changing the law to allow same-sex partners to adopt children. The court said that the questions proposed were “ambiguous” and not sufficiently understood by the electorate to render a fair result.
