Gay Marriage Discord Splits Romanian Party

Romania's third force, a year-old anti-corruption party called the Save Romania Union, is facing a leadership vacuum after an internal referendum over whether it should take a clear stance and vote against changing the constitution to include the conservative definition of family, as a union between a man and a woman.

Romania's lower chamber is set to make a decision in the autumn on whether parliament should call for a public plebiscite on modifying the state constitution so that it would fit the conservative family definition - a popular initiative by the Coalition for the Family, a group of 43 religious NGOs that campaign against same-sex marriage.

The bill calling for a plebiscite was submitted to parliament in 2015, after the Coalition managed to gather three million signatures to support it.

Despite the heated public debate over human rights violations, both the ruling Social Democrat Party and the main opposition party, the Liberals, decided to make pacts with the Coalition for the Family and support the bill that passed the Senate by a landslide in May.

Most of the senators who voted against changing the constitution, 22 of them, were from Save Romania Union.

But the issue created divisions in the party, leading to the resignation of its leader and founder Nicusor Dan. 

He left the political faction on June 1, after a heated debate with his fellow party leadership members.

Dan, a senator, did not vote on the issue in parliament and decided to let his fellow party members vote as they see fit.

However, many progressive members insisted that the USR should have taken a unified liberal stance and rejected the bill.

In the party's internal referendum, a majority of USR members said the party should oppose...