(LifeSiteNews) – The top court of the European Union ruled Tuesday that all EU countries must recognize homosexuals and their legal children as family members regardless of national laws on same-sex parenting or homosexual “marriage.”
In a ruling that applies to the entire 27-nation bloc, the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in Luxembourg declared that member countries must allow a same-sex couple to move and reside freely with a child legally recognized as their son or daughter by another EU state.
Eleven EU nations, most of them in Eastern Europe, do not recognize same-sex “marriage.”
The CJEU sided in favor of two lesbians who “married” in Spain and adopted a girl, Sara, born in 2019. The girl’s Spanish birth certificate lists the women, British national Jane Jones and Kalina Ivanova, a Bulgarian citizen, as her “mothers,” though she is not eligible for Spanish citizenship, as neither of the two women is Spanish.
Ivanova requested Bulgarian citizenship for Sara but was rejected, as majority-Christian Bulgaria does not permit homosexual “marriage” and Ivanova refused to provide details of the girl’s biological parents. Bulgarian birth certificates only include boxes for a child’s mother and father.
A birth certificate issued by Bulgarian authorities is necessary to obtain a Bulgarian ID, which Ivanova and Jones sought in order to travel freely with Sara across the EU. Ivanova eventually brought the case before a local court in Sofia, which declared that Sara has Bulgarian nationality, despite unresolved questions about her parents, and referred the case to the CJEU.
Christian Bulgaria ‘cannot rely on its national law’
In Tuesday’s ruling, which cannot be appealed, the CJEU held that Bulgaria must issue Sara an identity card or passport acknowledging her apparent Bulgarian nationality. The document must also include the declaration of her Spanish birth certificate that the two lesbians are her parents and allow Jones and Ivanova to move with the girl throughout EU territory.
Bulgaria “cannot rely on its national law as justification for refusing to draw up such an identity card or passport,” the court ruled.
Spanish authorities, the CJEU added, “have lawfully established that there is a parent-child relationship, biological or legal,” between Sara and the woman, even though same-sex parents have no reference in Bulgarian law and the EU typically reserves regulation of parenthood to individual countries.
All EU nations nevertheless must “recognize that parent-child relationship in order to enable [Sara] to exercise, with each of her parents, her right of free movement” under European law, according to the ruling.
Ivanova and Jones must also be recognized “as having the right, as parents of a Union citizen who is a minor and of whom they are the primary carers, to accompany that child when she is exercising her rights.”
Even if Sara is eventually found not to be a Bulgarian citizen, Ivanova and Jones must still be considered the girls’ parents, the court continued.
The judgment does not require Bulgaria or any other country “to provide, in its national law, for the parenthood of persons of the same sex, or to recognize, for purposes other than the exercise of the rights which the child derives from EU law, the parent-child relationship between that child and the persons mentioned on the birth certificate drawn up by the authorities of the host Member State as being the child’s parents.”
Same-sex adoption poses grave risks for children, as experts have attested. “Recent studies confirm that children reared by same-sex couples fare worse in a multitude of outcome categories than those reared by heterosexual, married couples,” according to the American College of Pediatricians. “[R]esearch has revealed that children reared in same-sex households are more likely to experience sexual confusion, engage in risky sexual experimentation, and later adopt a same-sex identity.”
The CJEU’s decree is the latest example of the European Union attempting to force conservative member states to embrace the LGBT movement within their borders. In June, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU would take steps against Hungary for enacting a law that bans the promotion of homosexuality or transgenderism to children.
Von der Leyen vowed to use “all the powers of the Commission” to block the legislation, which additionally increases penalties for child pornography and sexual abuse.
European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of the Council of Europe also made headlines earlier this year for a ruling that purported to require Russia to recognize same-sex “marriage,” which the Russian government dismissed.