In a referendum vote on Sunday, 65% of Croatians voted to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Several hundred gay rights activists and supporters marched in the capital, Zagreb, on Saturday urging Croatians to vote against the amendment, while liberal groups argued that the proposed ban would infringe on basic human rights. Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic previously blasted the referendum as giving “a chance to the majority to strip a minority of its rights.”
However, Croatia, the European Union’s newest nation (they joined back in July), has a population that is 90% Roman Catholic. The conservative group, In the Name of the Family, called for the referendum after Croatia’s center-left government drafted a law allowing gay couples to register as “life partners.” Church-backed groups gathered 750,000 signatures supporting the referendum.
Croatia’s liberal president, Ivo Josipovic, voted against the referendum, but he says its results must be respected and that there are other, more pressing concerns at hand.
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“The referendum result must not be the reason for new divisions,” Josipovic told the AP. “We have serious economic and social problems. It’s not worth it to focus on such issues.”
Josipovic is referring to the country’s worsening economic crisis and joblessness, which has made way for conservatives to gain ground. Still, Josipovic hinted at a law the government is preparing that will provide some rights to gay and lesbian couples living together.
The EU has yet to comment on Croatia’s ban on gay marriage. Currently, eight of the European Union’s 28 nations recognize same-sex marriage, including Belgium, The Netherlands, France, the UK, Spain and Denmark. Croatia is the sixth to pass a constitutional ban.
Photo: Split Pride
Cam
A quick fun little fact….
Enders Game is not even on the list of top 30 movies anymore even though other movies that were out BEFORE it are still raking in the money including movies like “Bad Grampa”.
After a month out Ender’s Game basically tied the amount of money that Gravity made in it’s first weekend. It made around 30 million LESS in it’s run than After Earth did, and even if you do NOT count the tens of millions in PR it cost and only take it’s filming cost into consideration it only covered half the cost.
Yeah…..and boycotts don’t work. 😉
Cam
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
Cam
Oh, and Fuck Croatia. I hope they enjoy being a tourist destination for Russians, because this isn’t going to help get others to go there.
Joetx
The Catholic Church was a BIG proponent of the referendum. So much for Pope Francis changing things.
Fuck Croatia & the Catholic Church.
CherylTHardin
my co-worker’s mother-in-law makes $67/hour on the internet. She has been without a job for seven months but last month her check was $19634 just working on the internet for a few hours. This Site……………….. x.co/3HayK
Stache1
The heavier the Religion in a country the more atrocities.
hex0
Bunch of troglodytes, it is unbelievable sometimes just how vicious and obsessive these people are of people who like the same sex.
krystalkleer
those who voted against it have very lil time left to spread their hatred…soon it’ll turn around…once they’re push’n up daisy’s!
http://getoffmydress.blogspot.com/2013/12/as-eyelash-curls.html
TheNewEnergyDude
@Joetx: oh boy I hear ya there, joe. No matter what “good intentions” the new pope has, and as cute as the things he’s saying, nothing will change in the catholic church (devil’s den…same difference). Ladies will never be ordained, gays still should go to hell, meanwhile pedophile priests will still get shuffled around and protected, and they’ll still be tax exempt even though they expect and get benefits they shouldn’t, because they’re only about money, politics and power. Blinded organized religion is truly the worst thing in the world and it’ll be the best thing ever when the whole cancerous diseased belief system finally dies off.
Daniel-Reader
Well since the LGBTA community vastly outnumbers Croatia, the LGBTA community will simply vote on the punishment, right? – since Croats said you only have to outnumber people to violate their human rights. They voted away people’s human rights so their own are now subject to the same thing. And you know who all the top human rights violators in the country are – something you didn’t know before. And you aren’t morally obligated to preserve a nation that has fallen to fascism in this manner. Imagine what China would do if Croatia had violated the human rights of Chinese people. The LGBTA community is way larger than China.
Daniel-Reader
And contrary to the Croatian president’s statement, you don’t have to respect any government that violates human rights. That is the point of human rights in the first place.
jmmartin
@Joetx: It might best be remembered that during WW2, Croatia was a Nazi puppet state headed by Ante Pavelic, who ruled with an iron fist with the full approval of the RCC. Pavelic slaughtered 750,000 Serbs (“sub-human”), Jews, and gypsies — and, no doubt, gays as well — in ethnic cleansing (at the time more appropriately called genocide). He was a staunch Roman Catholic (the Serbs were Eastern Orthodox, headquartered in Constantinople, not Rome). The iron guard handling all the arrests and exterminations was called the Ustasha, and they were, if anything, more ruthless than the Gestapo. After the war, an RCC organization called Caritas helped both German and Croatian war criminals escape from Europe to South America and, in at least one instance, to North America. In fact, as a reporter, I located one in California (Andrea Artukovic) and interviewed a U. S. representative who prosecuted his deportation for having entered with a forged Caritas passport. The RCC has a lot of blood on its hands, and now it continues its dogmatic pogrom, this time with gays as the objects of their vicious campaign against human rights.