What does family has to do with queer? Socio-legal revindications of same-sex families: A Greek case study

Accepting diversity by accepting LGBTI+ human and civil rights is the main objective of Member States of the European Union. Family life, marriage, and gender equality are protected under the European Convention on Human Rights. Despite EU treaties towards equality, pink families experience sociolegal discrimination in many EU societies (Hicks, 2006). This article conducts a critical policy discourse analysis of the law that extends civil partnership legislation to include same-sex couples in Greece. This law is examined as the first and only law that recognises queer family life in specific terms, as it does not provide any legal recognition to parenthood. The discourse analysis of the paper highlights how notions of sexuality, family, gender, biological sex, and nation shape laws and public policy pronouncements and contribute to the lack of a corresponding policy framework. By examining the relevant plenary session transcripts of Greek Parliament meetings and public political discourse about the law, I aim to pursue an in-depth sociological analysis of what shapes the sociolegal attitudes around same-sex kinship. The results of the research show that heterosexism, hegemonic ideologies, and norms about gender and sexuality, as well as dominant views about religion, nation, and kinship, are determining (even the queer) family typology within contemporary heteropatriarchal social rules. These factors contribute to the legal and social exclusion of non-heteronormative families, who “deviate” from hegemonic heteropatriarchal societal rules. Socially constructed hegemonic patriarchal stereotypes set the so-called ‘normality’, and the standards of the heteronormative norms in policy and in practice, often exclude non-normative forms of kinship. Political actors and opposing public voices, by posing emerging calls to the political system for the protection of the ‘sacred’ constitution of ‘family’ and ‘children (future citizens) of the nation’, acted and continue to act collectively in view of voting the cohabitation agreement legislation and as result, pursed the legal exclusion of same-sex parenting rights.