By Terry Vanderheyden
UFA, Bashkortostan, April 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A deputy in the State Assembly of a Russian Republic has been granted an inquiry by the country’s constitutional court, to investigate the legality of same-sex “marriage.”
Edvard Murzin, an MP from Bashkortostan – a republic with autonomous status in the southern Urals region – was denied a marriage license last year after attempting to marry a homosexual activist from Moscow. Although a heterosexual, Murzin calls himself a champion of homosexual “rights”, according to a UK Gay News report.
Last February Russia’s Supreme Court ruled to deny Murzin’s application to marry the editor of the Russian homosexual magazine “Queer,” stating that the country would maintain its traditional definition of marriage. Russia’s Family Code was amended to include a ban on same-sex “marriage” by the State Duma not long before Murzin’s attempt.
“I have received formal notification that the Court would consider my inquiry in a plenary session next May or June,” Murzin said Tuesday.
A Russian homosexual activist, Nikolai Alekseev, described Murzin’s chances of success as “close to nil. In the case of Mr. Murzin, his rights were not breached because he, being a heterosexual, never had any intention to register same-sex marriage and start a same-sex family,” he explained. “Moreover, his potential groom came to apply for marriage under pseudonym and even without passport which contradicts with the Russian family legislation and, actually, turned the marriage registration attempt into (a) farce.”
“There is nothing to prevent the Constitutional Court from ruling that the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples is unconstitutional as there is no strict definition of marriage as a union of one man and one woman in Russian Constitution,” Alekseev added.