Lithuania’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the country’s 2009 law against “gay propaganda” violates its constitutional protections for families, children, and its guaranteed “respect for human rights, dignity, equality, pluralism, and tolerance.”
The ruling somewhat involves the censoring of a fairy tale book containing stories of same-sex romantic pairings. The ruling also follows a January 2023 European Court ruling against the law. Legal observers have praised the Lithuanian court’s decision as progressive and said it’s likely to lead to increased court victories for LGBTQ+ rights.
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The Lithuanian court’s ruling, issued on December 18, struck down a 2009 anti-LGBTQ+ provision added to the 2002 Law on the Protection of Minors Against the Detrimental Effect of Public Information. The provision prohibits the publication of any materials intended for children that contain information that “creates a contempt for family values and promotes a concept of marriage and family formation different from that established in the Constitution and Civil Code.”
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The Lithuanian Constitution says that marriage is only between a man and a woman, and the 2009 law says information to the contrary harms children.
In December 2012, a gay female author named Neringa Dangvydė Macatė published Amber Heart (Gintarinė širdis) a fairy tale collection with a story about a prince who married a dark-skinned male tailor and a princess who married her childhood friend, a shoemaker’s daughter. After someone wrote the government, accusing the book of “encouraging perversions,” the Ministry of Culture deemed the book as harmful to minors under the law and forbade it from being publicly sold.
Macatė filed a civil suit against the government’s actions in October 2014. After the European Court of Human Rights found that the law violated the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), a 1950 law protecting civil rights and political freedoms across the continent. Specifically, the court found that the law violated the ECHR’s rights to free expression and the provision of culturally beneficial information to children.
After the European Court’s ruling, the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice asked the Lithuanian Constitutional Court to rule on the law’s legality.
The Lithuanian Court ruled that while the Constitution defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, the concept of a family is “gender neutral” and extends to various family models. As such, stories of same-sex couples within families don’t violate any legal concepts in Lithuanian law, the court ruled.
Furthermore, the court pointed out that the Constitution defines childhood as a ‘particularly protected’ ‘special period’ of psychological and cultural development. The court rejected the argument that protecting childhood involves shielding kids from info about diverse family models. Its ruling said that restricting information about “real social relations” would “hinder the development of minors as mature, comprehensive personalities” and contradict the state’s constitutional duty to ensure “harmonious and comprehensive development of the child,” according to the European Journal of International Law (EJIL).
The EJIL called the court’s ruling a “progressive evolution” that “marks a crucial departure from traditional, heteronormative understandings of family, recognizing that family bonds can exist independently of gender configurations.”
The EJIL also said the court’s ruling “creates a broader, more inclusive framework for family protection that operates independently of marital status” and that focuses more on “mutual responsibility, understanding, emotional attachment, and assistance – rather than their formal status.”
In doing so, the court has created “a more inclusive framework for family recognition that supports constitutional “values of pluralism, equality, and human dignity,” the group wrote.
While the EJIL noted that the ruling doesn’t directly address the law’s inherent discrimination against LGBTQ+ people — preferring instead to “cautious[ly] … address LGBTQ+ rights through the lens of broader constitutional principles,” the Lithuanian Gay League responded to the ruling, noting that the law has “cast a long shadow” over the country’s LGBTQ+ community.
“The provision’s existence created a significant chilling effect, leading to self-censorship among LGBTIQ+ individuals, organizations, and media outlets,” the group’s statement said. “This contributed to increased minority stress within the community, as individuals and organizations had to constantly evaluate whether their expression, events, or publications might fall foul of the law.”
“The decision upholds the constitutional understanding that family, as a protected institution, can be formed on bases other than marriage, and emphasizes the importance of providing youth with information that reflects real social relationships and promotes respect for human rights and dignity,” the statement added.
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