European gay activists fail in first bid to block grassroots pro-marriage effort
The first attempt to stop a citizens’ initiative to
get the European Union to endorse tradition marriage has failed.
The “Mum, Dad & Kids” initiative must first
gather 1 million signatures by December 11, and then be approved by the
European Commission for submission to the European Parliament, and then be
approved by a majority of MEPs.
As hard as that is likely to prove, the powerful,
publicly-funded European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA Europe) recently requested that
the Court of Justice of the European Union overturn the European Commission’s
decision to register the initiative in the first place.
But the CJEU has summarily dismissed the request.
As the conservative Agenda Europe website has reported, the court declared the
request “manifestly inadmissible.” Such decisions by the European Commission
are final and not appealable.
But the ILGA has other plans to derail the
initiative before it builds up steam. These were inadvertently revealed in a
private memo to affiliated organizations throughout Europe posted by mistake on
a Northern Ireland LBGT website last month.
The initiative is intended to halt a trend by the
European Union to make laws and regulations which define families in broad
terms that cover any close relationship between co-habiting adults, in other
words, both homosexual relationships and committed but unmarried heterosexual
relationships. The family, says the petition, means a mother, a father, and
their children, but includes grandparents and grandchildren too.
The ECI would also set up a legal firewall so that
what is accepted as a family in one country cannot be forced onto another
country. A country rejecting homosexual “marriage” would not have to provide
spousal benefits to the same-sex partner of a citizen “married” in another EU
member country.
ILGA Europe, an NGO that gets two thirds of its
2-million Euro budget from the Dutch, U.S., and European Union governments, has
revealed that the CJEU appeal was just one of three measures planned to stop
Mums,Dads & Kids in its tracks.
In a private message for LGBT leaders from ILGA
Europe internal advocacy director Katrin Hugendubel, reported by the
conservative Agenda Europe, the organization revealed it had already complained
to the EC’s secretary general “demanding that the Commission withdraw its
decision to register” the Mum Dad & Kids initiative.
It also explained that an Italian affiliate, Certi
Diritti, was to appeal to the CJEU, a ploy that the court has now rejected.
Finally, reports Agenda Europe, IGLA is marshalling
arguments for an international campaign to counter the initiative, apparently
with personal mudslinging against the leaders of Mums, Dads & Kids
comprising a key element. Hugendubel asks ILGA’s affiliates throughout Europe,
“If in the meantime you have information for example about the people behind the
ECI…, please do not hesitate to send this to me.”
