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LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, December 22, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – A Slovenian pro-family coalition has won a referendum rejecting by a two-to-one margin a law legalizing same-sex “marriage,” despite many roadblocks. It matches pro-family initiatives across Eastern Europe.  

The coalition not only won the referendum required, by a 63-36 percent margin of the popular vote, but also surpassed the required quorum of 30 percent of eligible voters by 7 percent. Its leaders, Metka Zevnik and Aleš Primc, issued a brief note of triumph, stating, “We have succeeded! Congratulations to all of you who in the referendum contributed to the excellent outcome! We are grateful to all supporters and sympathizers and their families for all the support and excellent work.”

“This is a victory for our children,” says Primc.

A referendum earlier this year in Slovakia produced an astonishing 94 percent majority against same-sex “marriage,” but only 21 percent of the electorate participated, far below the 50 percent threshold required. (Last year, Slovakian legislators enshrined heterosexual marriage in the constitution.) A Croatian referendum in 2013 produced the same margin as Slovenia's and met the threshold to enshrine marriage in the constitution.

The Slovenian referendum overturns a law passed in March that legalized same-sex “marriage,” extending to same-sex couples the especially contentious “right” to adopt.

It's For The Children Coalition's victory comes at the end of a long battle with what was described by the pro-family agency Agenda Europe as “the left-leaning political class” of “residual communists” who controlled the National Assembly.

The coalition already won this fight once, in 2012, overturning a measure that extended to same-sex couples all the rights of married couples save adoption and the use of the term “marriage” for their relationships.

This March, a new parliament passed a law extending full recognition to same-sex “marriage” by a 51-28 margin. The coalition immediately launched a petition to hold another referendum. Requiring 2,500 uncertified signatures for this the first stage, the coalition produced 80,000. Next, it needed to gather 40,000 “certified” signatures in 35 days. The coalition garnered 48,000 inside a week.

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The National Assembly promptly vetoed the referendum because, it claimed, in the words of  Agenda Europe, “it would lead to an unconstitutional result, depriving a group (those with same-sex attraction) of their right to marry.”

When the coalition announced its intention to challenge that vote, the president of the assembly decreed arbitrarily that opponents had only a week to file their challenge with the Constitutional Court. The coalition challenged the deadline with the same court and won, gaining a 15-day extension. In October, the court ruled in their favor by a 5-4 margin, ruling that the National Assembly, not the drafters of the referendum, had violated the constitution.

The referendum proceeded smoothly from there, producing not only a check to the homosexual agenda, but a stiff rebuke to the country's parliamentarians and what Agenda Europe termed their “obscene misuse of power.”

The Slovenian effort won praise from Peter LaBarbera, head of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality. “It's very encouraging, indicating that in reality people are opposed to same-sex marriage, opposed to men becoming women, opposed to men marrying men, whenever you go outside the decadent Western countries such as the United States, Canada, and Northern Europe.”

LaBarbera echoed the comments of Agenda Europe, characterizing the LGBT agenda as the latest expression of left-wing politics. “Regular people in Jamaica, in Kenya, in Slovenia are fighting back against the new leftist morality,” he told LifeSiteNews.

“The left has turned itself upside-down; it likes to condemn imperialism and colonialism – but this is nothing but a new form of imperialism,” said LaBarbera, charging U.S. President Barack Obama with applying “LGBT imperialism” to weak and poor countries.

At least eight European Union member states have legalized same-sex “marriage” laws: the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, England, Spain, France, and Portugal. On the other hand, at least eight European countries have passed laws to the contrary: Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Croatia.