LGBT rights in Greece

A vast survey by an EU rights body has found that 44% of LGBTIQ people in Greece have faced discrimination in at least one area of their life in the year before the survey. 

Although the figure is the 5th highest in the EU, it has decreased since the previous EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey in 2019, where 51% of respondents in Greece had faced discrimination. 

Greek LGBT+ couples were preparing to tie the knot on Friday, one day after a historic parliamentary vote made same-sex civil marriage legal, the culmination of decades of campaigning for equal rights.

Parliament is poised to vote the same-sex marriage bill, with the help of three center-left and left-wing opposition parties.

Passage of the bill will bestow full parental rights upon same-sex couples, although it would not allow male partners to have children born in Greece through surrogacy.

Citizens are divided on same-sex marriage, and more negative on legal recognition of their children, according to a nationwide opinion poll by Pulse on behalf of Skai. 

Most respondents tilted in favor of the establishment of non-state universities, while they consider sports fan violence part of a wider phenomenon. 

Greek Premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he plans to legalize same-sex marriage during his second term in government.

"Same-sex marriage will happen at some point and it's part of our strategy," Mitsotakis was quoted as telling Bloomberg Television in an interview last Tuesday in Athens. "Greek society is much more ready and mature."

Greece's Supreme Court has annulled a same-sex marriage conducted in 2008 on Tilos by the mayor of the tiny Aegean island.

Judges Thursday upheld a previous order by a Rhodes prosecutor calling such nuptials illegal.

Greece's parliament has approved a new law that will make it easier for people to change their legal gender, reported BBC. 

Citizens over the age of 15 will now be able to change their gender with a court ruling and without requiring a medical operation.

Greece's parliament on Dec. 23 approved a bill granting same-sex couples the right to a civil union, becoming one of the last European countries to give them legal recognition after years of opposition from the influential Orthodox church.

Hundreds of people on Saturday joined Greece's annual gay pride parade in a long-standing demand for equal rights to civil union and adoption.

Titled «A Family Affair», the 10th Athens Pride held on central Klafthmonos Square was supported by nearly a dozen embassies including those of Britain, the United States and Canada.