‘Go away’

The bill has barely made headway in the 21 months since it was submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of parliament. In common with much of the public, MPs who are neither keen supporters nor keen opponents (and who make up the majority of the 200-seat parliament) have little appetite to deal with the issue.

No date for a vote on the bill has ever been proposed; it has enjoyed just two brief debates, the last a year ago. Analysis of parliamentary records by the Jsme Fer non-governmental organisation suggests significant filibustering from opponents whenever it has made a brief appearance on the agenda.

A proposal to put the bill back into debate was supported by just 54 MPs on March 3. Although that outgunned the 51 votes against, abstentions derailed the effort.

While the government has given the cross-party sponsored bill its approval, neither Ano nor the junior coalition partner Social Democrats have put forward a party line, leaving MPs free to vote however they wish. Support in both parties is mixed; abstentions are common.

The centrist Pirates and small centre-right Stan are the only parties to show solid support. Staunch opposition is found on the part of the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy, the Communist party and the Christian Democrat KDU-CSL.

The latter party has even sponsored a “sister” bill seeking to amend the constitution to define marriage in heterosexual terms. Former leader Marek Vyborny, who put forward this counter bill, told BIRN last year that he wanted to “prevent the dilution of marriage by liberal forces”.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the ranks opposing equal marriage include the Civic Democratic Party, the Czech Republic’s dominant centre-right party since the fall of communism.

“Many MPs just want the whole issue to go away,” said Adela Horakova, advocacy director at Jsme Fer. “They don’t believe it’s important enough to go out on a limb for and they’re scared of the vehement opposition from the far-right and Catholic Church.”

Many MPs just want the whole issue to go away. They don’t believe it’s important enough to go out on a limb for and they’re scared of the vehement opposition from the far-right and Catholic Church. – Adela Horakova, Jsme Fer

Illustrating the kind of rhetoric that scares these parliamentarians, senior priest Petr Pitha — who is close to reactionary President Milos Zeman — has warned that “perverse laws” threaten to destroy the “traditional family”.

During a sermon delivered in Prague’s iconic St Vitus Cathedral Pitha, he forewarned of a nightmarish world in which homosexuals are declared a superior ruling class. Armed with Marxist and Nazi ideology, this new elite would then kidnap children to be re-educated while their dissenting parents are sent to concentration camps, he said.