Romania has scheduled a referendum to decide whether same-sex marriage should be legalized within the country. The whole nation will be a part of the referendum which is set to take place between the dates of October 6-7. Legalizing gay marriage won’t be the only thing that’s altered in the country, previously marriage in Romania was referred to as the union between a man and a woman. The referendum results could change the meaning of the term to be non-gender specific.
The group Coalition for Family is responsible for the referendum being held as they managed to obtain 3 million individual signatures supporting the course in 2016. The basis of the campaign was to change the being behind the word spouse to not limit it to being just between a man and a woman.
Romania’s lower house of parliament supported the idea of a nationwide vote last year and has now been approved by the senate in a vote of 107 to 13. Many religious groups including Greek-Catholic and Orthodox-Roman Catholic churches were also in favor of the vote to change the meaning of spouse in today’s modern age.
For the poll to be valid, at least a third of the nation’s population needs to have voted for either cause. With a population of approximately 18 million people, at least 6 million of those need to vote. Any less and the result would be considered to be non-binding. This threshold for the referendum has left LGBT group, MozaiQ angry as they deem the system as immoral. They have urged all eligible voters in the nation to boycott the vote so that whatever the decision is it will be considered non-binding.
