The price of marriage: Same-sex sexualities and citizenship in Greece

Abstract

In contrast to other European countries Greece seems to be the only country which has passed a registered cohabitation law that applies only to heterosexual couples. Thus, heterosexual couples in Greece can now choose between religious marriage, civil marriage or registered partnership, while same-sex couples are still denied any sort of legal recognition regarding their relationship. In this article I discuss recent LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) politics in Greece, and their efforts for the recognition of same-sex marriage, in order to argue that LGBT agendas, European politics, and state policies on marriage and same-sex couple recognition cannot be disconnected from local conceptualizations of kinship, gender and sexuality. The paradox of a registered cohabitation law that excludes same-sex couples can only be explained in relation to the cultural significance of heterosexual coupling as a prerequisite for the fulfillment of one’s subjectivity. Yet, from another perspective the same cultural idiom that values coupling and marriage may be used to explain the almost unified LGBT organizations’ stance towards pro-marriage agendas.

Keywords

European politics Greek state policies kinship and law LGBT movement same-sex marriage sexual citizenship

Introduction

Ethnographers of Greece have demonstrated keen interest in kinship, family, marriage and procreation, and promoted a single idea of maleness and femaleness as distinctive and complementary (Campbell, 1964; Dubisch, 1983, 1986; du Boulay, 1974; Friedl, 1962, Hirschon, 1978). Because of the significance of marriage and kinship, Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis (1991) have coined the term the ‘domestic model of gender’ to describe a set of ideas about men and women in which married life can be depicted through what married people say about, and what they do in, marriage. According to this model, kinship plays a crucial role in the definition of female and male identities. By this is meant that womanhood and manhood are expressed in terms of domestic kinship – that is, women are perceived as ‘mothers’, ‘mistresses of the house’, ‘wives’; men are perceived as ‘householders’ or ‘fathers’ – and that gender attributes are linked to domestic kinship roles; womanhood means nurturing, cooking, cleaning, while manhood means providing for the household, representing or defending kinship loyalties. According to the same model, sexes are represented as being in a relationship of complementarity, mutual dependence, and ideal equality (Loizos and Papataxiarchis, 1991: 7–8), while ‘full adult status for both men and women requires an indissoluble marriage, blessed with children’ (Loizos, 1994: 67).

Yet, ‘ … since the writing of the classic texts on gender in Greece that so deeply influenced scholars’ analytical categories, massive social changes have taken place in Greek society in terms of gender relations, women’s employment, Civil Law reform and urbanisation’ (Cowan, 1990: 9). The outcome of such research was that the model of complementarity has been strongly contested by more recent Greek enthnographers who have recognized that ‘ … not only is there no single sense of masculinity’ (and for that purpose also femininity) ‘in that abstraction called “Greek culture”, but that from one local context, institution, domain or discourse to another we can easily find contrasting ways of being masculine [or feminine]’ (Loizos, 1994: 78). Anthropological work in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century focused on gender in contexts other than the household – in the coffee shop (Papataxiarchis, 1991), in the convent (Iossifides, 1991), among football fans (Papageorgiou, 1998), in a Mykonian group of exogenous ‘locals’ (Bousiou, 1998) – while other anthropologists stressed the importance of looking at sexuality, especially same-sex sexuality, towards a reconsideration of gender (see Faubion (1995); Yannakopoulos (1995); Kantsa (2001); Kirtsoglou (2004); Riedel (2005); Apostolidou (2010).)

The present article employs this latter work on gender and sexuality in order to revisit anthropological interest in marriage from the perspective of a recent pro-same-sex marriage campaign performed by LGBT organizations in Greece. Drawing on ethnographic research on same-sex sexualities in contemporary Greece and, more specifically, same-sex marriage,¹ I will relate and discuss LGBT pro-marriage politics with former LGBT agendas, current European politics and Greek state policies, as well as cultural conceptualizations of marriage, gender and sexuality. Through a discussion on same-sex marriage, and its specificities in the Greek context, I intend to focus on the cultural and political effects of ‘global’ agendas on ‘local’ understandings of sexuality and gender, and centre upon the complex and changing meanings of gendered and sexed citizenship. The paper is divided into three parts; the first part provides a brief account of the legal context of marriage in Greece, the second part refers to recent pro same-sex marriage agendas and relates them to national and European politics and policies, and the third part relocates the discussion on same-sex marriage and citizenship in cultural specificities.

From father’s authority to gender equality

Athens, summer 1975. Erifylli, Pasalidi, aged 26, lives with women friends and her female partner in a rented house. She narrates:

I lived in Athens with my [female] partner. Because we did not have any money we came to a brilliant idea! I should return to my hometown for one year, have a fake marriage, take the money from my dowry, and do afterwards whatever we wanted to. Back then, the institution of dowry was still valid. I found a friend of mine who was gay and liked the idea of getting part of the money from my dowry in order to go, let’s say, for postgraduate studies in London. But we were not lucky. When the announcement of our engagement was published in the local press my father received an anonymous call. ‘You poor guy! The groom is a sissy, communist, and poor!’. A minor scandal took place, we left the city, and the groom got angry because my relatives insulted his. He got so mad that he even went to my father and said ‘Do not call me ‘poustis’ [faggot] because your daughter is also a lesbian and we had arranged everything together’. I was absolutely furious with him!

It is 1975, only one year after the fall of the military dictatorship, which held power from 1967 to 1974, and Greek society is trying to recover from this stagnant period and catch up with recent social trends in ‘western’ countries. Thus, feminist, gay and lesbian movements that have flourished in northern European countries and the USA since the mid 1960s will not make their appearance in Greece until after the mid 1970s. For the next couple of years, people who are studying abroad will be eager to import ‘new’ ideas and force changes in relation to gender, kinship and sexuality (Kantsa, 1995/1996). Yet, in that summer of 1975, the Family Law² – which has remained unchanged from the 1940s till its reform in 1983 – still refers to the father as the ‘Head of the Family’ and makes him responsible for everything that concerns family life. Wife and children are supposed to be under the husband/father’s supervision and are obliged to be named after his last name. Moreover, a woman’s family is urged by law to give the future husband a dowry as a form of compensation for the ‘burdens of marriage’ (Dragona and Tseliou, 2008: 126–127). In 1975, the only escape from the ‘Law of the Father’ seemed to be to exchange it for the ‘Law of the Husband’. It is in this context that Erifylli Pasalidi – a young woman in her 20s, university educated, rebellious, and who would later become an active member of an autonomous lesbian group – tried to escape from her natal family by marrying her gay same-aged male friend to get money in the form of a dowry that would enable her to move on with her personal life. It turned out that the effort was a total failure and Erifylli Pasalidi never got married, nor would she even think of getting married again.

The anachronistic Family Code eventually changed in 1983.³ The new Family Code, which was passed by the Greek Parliament under the pressure of local socialist and liberal feminist organizations, recognized the equality between husband and wife, provided them with the same rights over their children, allowed women to keep their family names and removed the obligation for a dowry. Moreover, it provided couples who wished to get married with a significant alternative; the right to civil marriage. Till then the only available type of marriage was the religious one. Noteworthy, in the years that followed, the percentage of civil marriages in relation to religious ones remained very low, and the latter still kept its symbolic position as the ‘real one’ and those who married in a town hall would often decide to remarry in a church.⁴ Yet, another change was about to come. In 2008, 25 years later, a further change in Family Code provided couples with a new alternative: registered cohabitation.⁵ Nowadays, couples in Greece can marry in church in front of the priest, can marry in the town hall in front of the mayor, or can sign a cohabitation contract in front of a notary. All couples? No, only ‘heterosexual’ ones. Interestingly enough, Greece is one of the few countries in Europe that does not provide any sort of legal recognition for same-sex relationships, neither in the form of marriage nor as a registered partnership or registered cohabitation. This legal context has infuriated members of local LGBT organizations who embarked on a passionate campaign in support of civil same-sex marriage before the passing of the 2008 Law and have continued to do so ever since.

‘Say “I do”!’

Athens, June 2007. Klavthmonos Square, during the 3rd Athens Pride.⁶ ‘Say “I do”! We say “I do”’, was the slogan of the campaign organized by OLKE (Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece)⁷ in order to support legal recognition of same-sex partnerships in the form of marriage. The brochure, which was widely circulated by OLKE in 2007, states:

Let’s disconnect civil marriage from family and its religious burden.

Civil Marriage concerns the protection of basic rights for two people who choose to share their lives.

Because we have the right to …

decide on medical issues on behalf of our partners if it is needed

visit them in emergency rooms

inherit their effects in the case of death, so that no forgotten relatives may come and dispute a will

get loans on favourable conditions

get taxed on the same favourable conditions

visit them while in jail etc.

By legalizing our relationships we become more visible and stronger and may integrate more easily.

OLKE’s pro-same-sex marriage campaign started in 2004 and its members have since made numerous appeals to political parties and politicians asking for their support. It is was not the first time that the issue of same-sex marriage had come top on the agenda of lesbian and gay organizations; however, it was the first time that this topic had gained such popularity with the majority of LGBT organizations to agree on the need of its legal recognition. This has not always been the case.

One of the main and recurrent problems faced by LGBT groups and organizations in Europe remains related to marriage and co-habitation laws and shared custody over children. Although, nowadays, a significant number of European countries recognize the right to registered partnership or cohabitation for non-heterosexual couples, the majority of them are still quite reluctant to assign marriage or joint adoption rights to same-sex couples.⁸ Because of this persistent discrimination, family rights were put high on the agenda of several LGBT groups and organizations across Europe. Yet, others were hesitant to adopt a pro-marriage and family politics and have underlined instead the normative character of such an agenda.

In Greece during the 1990s the issue of same-sex marriage used to be a contested issue among LGBT organizations and lesbian and gay autonomous groups. Although EOK (Greek Homosexual Community) and Symbraxi (Co-operation Against Homophobia) advocated the right of gay and lesbian people to get married, and they even organized a conference under the title ‘Homosexual Marriage’ in Thessaloniki, in March 1996, members of another organization named OPOTH (Homosexual’s Initiative of Thessaloniki) wondered whether gay marriage constituted a liberating or a compromising act. Articles published in the group’s magazine, O Pothos (The Desire), under titles such as ‘Homosexual marriage’ (1996a), ‘News’ (1996b), ‘Let’s get married, darling’ (1997) expressed their hesitant position towards same-sex marriage. Likewise, the editors of the lesbian magazine Madame Gou, which published three issues between 1995 and 1997, had a similar ambivalent position expressed in articles such as, ‘Marriage: Right or withdrawal from difference’ (1997). Although the editors agreed that people should not be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexual orientation, they wondered whether a preoccupation with marriage might be nothing else than reconciliation to the dominant structure.⁹

A few years later, during the first years of the 21 st century, the political climate among LGBT organizations was about to change because of expected reforms in the Family Law – which dated back to 1983 – concerning registered partnership and/or cohabitation. In his paper ‘Getting married in Greece: Amnesty International and the Working Group in Sexuality 2003–2004’ the anthropologist Brian Riedel describes how since October 2003 LGBT rights organizations in Athens started to meet with the local chapter of Amnesty International. He observes that in the beginning ‘the series began as an open-purposed working group on sexuality. Over time, however, the group began to focus its attention on preparations for a government hearing before the National Board on Human Rights about a proposed partnership registry in Greece’ (Reidel, 2008: 1).

At that time, government and political parties thought that they would soon have to proceed to legal reforms because of the country’s participation in the European Union. Therefore, by the end of 2004, EEDA (National Committee for Human Rights) – the official Counselor of the Prime Minister of the right wing party of Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy), which was then the incumbent governmental party – proposed to the government the legal recognition of cohabitation among same-sex people as a means for the removal of discriminations. Moving a step further in April 2006, the second largest political party in Greece PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) distributed an outline for a law on registered cohabitation for heterosexual and same-sex partners. In this outline PASOK’s Committee for Human Rights proposed that registered cohabitation should contain exactly the same set rights and obligations that married people have. They explain that the reasons for their proposal are (a) the number of people in Greece who have decided to live together has risen significantly, (b) the fact that LGBT people do not have the same rights in comparison to other citizens, (c) there is a significant delay in Greek Law in comparison to other European countries (Panhellenic Socialist Movement, 2006: 1).

LGBT organizations thought it was the right moment for action. The issue of same-sex marriage became top on the agenda of lesbian and gay organizations, especially on the agenda of OLKE; as any prospective law (despite the government’s concession to recognize and legalize same-sex cohabitation) would only concern registered partnerships or registered cohabitation and not marriage, it was therefore considered to reconfirm governmental discrimination. The time had come to claim the right to same-sex marriage and put an end to the discriminatory politics that had long prevented same-sex couples from religious and/or civil marriage.

From the beginning, religious marriage was completely out of the question. The Orthodox Church in Greece had long made clear its stance on same-sex marriage and its representatives have often declared their strong opposition. ‘The Church is definitely negative towards homosexuality and the possibility of institutionalization of the so called “marriage” between homosexuals’, says one of its representatives in an article published in a Sunday newspaper a few years ago (Laskaraki, 2004: 60). ‘For Church marriage is the holiest sacrament’, he continues, ‘it blesses the union of a man and a woman in order to fulfil themselves through the creation of a family. “Marriage” between homosexuals violates marriage, which loses its sacred character and turns into an unnatural act’.

Yet, from the perspective of law things appeared to be more complex. As already mentioned, civil marriage was established in Greece with the Law article 1329/1983 of Civil Code. This article, which determines the preconditions for getting married, refers only to the necessity of the consensus of adult persons, people who are already 18 years old and above. The Law refers to humans, persons to be married, and husbands, and does not discern among sexes; does not discriminate on grounds of gender, sexual orientation or preference of to-be-married persons. Yet, when LGBT organizations raised the issue of marriage regardless of sex, the official answer stressed that without any doubt, on the level of law interpretation, marriage must be considered absolutely as the union of man and woman. This interpretation, they continued, should be sought in the foundations of Greek and Roman Legal Code and in the tradition of Christianity. In western thought marriage has always been considered as an institution that necessarily includes a man and a woman because it is their sexual union that can lead to procreation. Not all legal theorists agree on this. Family Law Professor, Theano Papazisi, underlines that neither in legal fictions nor in religious beliefs are children mentioned as a prerequisite for marriage (2007: 23–24). Why, then, must different sex be a prerequisite for marriage, when it is not explicitly mentioned in the Law?

Thanks to this vagueness in law, civil society organizations – in other words, the Hellenic League for Human Rights – have advised gays and lesbians since 2004 to go to the town or city hall and ask for a marriage license. In case of a ‘no’, advocates continued, the partners should bring their case to the court, even to the European Court. ‘All gay organizations agree that the basis for discussion in Greece must be the civil marriage’, declared Grigoris Valianatos, a well-known activist, ‘first, because, in order to negotiate you should always ask for more. Secondly, because civil marriage is regarded as a second-class marriage anyway, and is disconnected from Church, so we do not have to ask for the Church’s opinion once more in order to change or to expand it’ (Laskaraki, 2004: 54–55).

By 2007, both OLKE and the majority of other LGBT organizations, including independently politically engaged lesbians and gays, were insisting on the right to civil marriage – regardless of gender, sexual orientation or preference. Meetings were held, articles were published, blogshots were created, and a pro-marriage campaign under the title ‘Say “I Do”!’ was organized. The campaign was based on the issue of civil rights.

Despite isolated counter voices the proliferation of a pro-marriage discourse would only grow in the following months because of specific political and historical circumstances. In March 2008, the right-wing party of Nea Dimokratia, who at that time governed the country, announced the promotion of a draft law granting legal partnership status to unmarried couples through a ‘cohabitation contract’. The law referred to unions only between men and women and excluded same-sex couples. The reaction from LGBT organizations, socialists and left-wing political parties and civil society organizations was immediate and they strongly opposed the proposal. Members of OLKE met the Minister of Justice and circulated open letters criticizing the content of the proposal while further engaging in their pro-same-sex marriage campaign. A few days later, at the end of March, the Minister of Justice announced that a legal scientific committee would be formed ‘in order to examine the future extension of the “cohabitation contract” to same-sex couples’ (Pavlou, 2009: 18). Yet, this was an announcement that would not be fulfilled. Therefore, a few weeks before the Law was brought to Parliament, on 3 June 2008, two couples, a lesbian and gay, came to an agreement with the mayor of the island of Tilos, a small island in the south-eastern Aegean and got married as a sign of resistance against discriminating sexual politics. The event attracted the attention of the media and for a few days it appeared constantly in newspaper and TV headlines. A court session that took place a few months later came to the decision that these marriages were said to be ‘unfounded’ on the grounds that the law regarding ‘gender difference’ was unfulfilled. Soon afterwards the couples took their case to the European Court of Human Rights (see olke.org, n.d.). In November 2008, the reform of the Family Code took place and the Greek Parliament voted for cohabitation rights that would apply only to heterosexuals. Despite their pre-election promises the Socialist Movement PASOK, which won the 2009 elections, did not change the law. Neither has the law been changed by subsequent governments. In February 2011, the European Court of Human Rights decided to convey to Greece the query whether the exclusion of same-sex partners from registered cohabitation violates Article 8 (right of respect for private and family life) alone, or in conjunction with Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination), as well as Article 13 (right for legal remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Legal Council of the Hellenic State has undertaken the duty to investigate the case. Today, in 2014, same-sex couples in Greece still do not have any means for the legal recognition of their relationship, not to mention rights over their respective children.

Yet … ‘Are we ready to get married?’

Α lesbian feminist activist in a letter circulated in Greek LGBT blogs in March 2007 asked, ‘Are we ready to get married? How many of us are ready to stand up for civil marriage?’ While OLKE and other LGBT organizations promoted pro-same-sex marriage politics on the ground of civil rights, very few articles were circulated and voices were raised opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples.¹⁰ At Athens Pride in 2007, members of the Athenian queer group QV (Queericulum Vitae) distributed a pamphlet that criticized mainstream LGBT groups, and especially OLKE, and stated that they intended to replace not only heteronormativity with gamokanonikótita, translated as ‘marriagenormativity’, but also ‘fucking normativity’ since in the Greek language the word gámos (marriage), derives from the verb gamáo (having sex, fuck).

In a review of the literature on patterns of non-heterosexual relationships, Jeffrey Weeks, Catherine Donovan, and Brian Heaphy (1996) argue that significant changes have taken place in non-heterosexual relationships since the 1960s. An interest in sexuality and identity has been replaced by an ever-growing awareness of topics such as relationships, intimacy and family.¹¹ Drawing on Giddens’ work, Weeks et al. conclude that ‘the transformations of intimacy, themselves the product of the breakdown of traditional narratives and legitimizing discourses under the impact of global economic and social forces, are making possible diverse ways of life which cut across the homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy, and which are producing a pluralization of domestic patterns and relationships’ (Weeks et al, 1996: 5). The transformation of intimacy is related to the process of globalization – and its results of detraditionalization, individualization, and identity creation – with the result that,

we are here in a world where the imperatives of history, nature and science are being displaced by the norm of sexual choice, and where a master narrative is being displaced by a multiplication of new narratives, each claiming its own truth. (Weeks, 2000: 238)

Moreover, these new stories about the self, about sexuality and gender, make the claim for a new form of belonging which ‘reflects the remaking of the self and the multiplicity and diversity of possible identities that characterize the late, or post-modern world’ (Weeks, 1998: 35) and therefore provide ‘the context for the emergence of the sexual citizen’ (1998: 47). The concept of ‘sexual citizenship’ draws heavily on Kenneth Plummer’s notion of ‘intimate citizenship’; he defines it as a new field of life politics, ‘a new set of claims around the body, the relationship and sexuality’ (1996: 45). But where Plummer sees in the emergence of new narratives about intimacy, sexuality, relationships, and family, and in the uttering of new stories about self and identity the ‘potential for a radical transformation of the social order’, Weeks et al. are more reluctant to adopt such an optimistic view. They comment that ‘those who welcome the diversity of contemporary society, and the consequent need to redefine the concept of citizenship to include different ways of life, have recently been confronted by evidence which points to the remarkable stability of everyday life, despite apparent changes in form and ideology’ (1996: 3).

Weeks’ notion on the reflexive sexual citizen and its focus on the self-conscious articulation of sexual citizenship as a form of life politics in late modernity is contested by theorists who look at the concept of citizenship as deeply embedded in heterosexuality. As David Bell and Jon Binnie (2000) argue, the civic liberalist tradition in citizenship theory is most closely aligned to TH Marshall (1950) ‘with its analysis of the state’s paternal role in securing the welfare and rights of its citizens, as well as binding citizens together in sociality’ (Bell and Binnie, 2000: 7). Yet, the contemporary citizenship debate has moved a long way beyond Marshall, due to feminist and poststructuralist rereadings of the terms and conditions of being a citizen that have challenged the assumption of ‘neutral’ – in the terms of ‘ungendered’, ‘unraced’, ‘unaged’ – citizenship (see e.g. Mouffe, 1992; Werbner and Yuval-Davis, 1999). Academics preoccupied with sexuality have further explored feminist critiques of citizenship discourse. Thus, Diane Richardson exposes the heterosexualizing of citizenship as an extension of exposing its gendering. Her ‘starting point is the argument that claims to citizenship status, at least in the West, are closely associated with the institutionalization of heterosexual as male privilege’ (1998: 88). In their analysis on marriage and sexual citizenship, Bell and Binnie make distinctions between pro-marriage advocates, who argue that ‘opening up the question of lesbian and gay marriage, can have far broader impacts, throwing light onto both the construction of homosexuality and heterosexuality in law, and the limitations of such constructions’ (2000: 56) and anti-marriage proponents who think that such a move could have the function of reaffirming marriage as an institution. However, the most significant aspect of such a move is that it stresses that ‘a focus exclusively on challenging the legal discourse around marriage, therefore, falls short of considering which aspects of popular discourse are contested or reaffirmed by such a move’ (2000: 59).¹²

The foregoing discussion is relevant to the Greek paradigm. As I have argued in the Introduction, Greece has been described as a society largely imbued with the imperatives of marriage. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Greece still holds a rather high place among European countries in relation to its percentage of marriages and has one of the lowest divorce rates.¹³ Moreover, Greece holds the lowest percentage of births outside wedlock among European countries¹⁴ and one of the lowest percentages of non-marital cohabitation among EU countries.¹⁵ Both types of family formation are not sufficiently supported by the state. Although the absence of state policies does not necessarily prevent the existence of such family forms it perpetuates their discrimination and therefore reduces their numbers. A research program on family and state policies (IPROSEC, see Stratigaki, 2004) has demonstrated that the religious and symbolic importance of family in Greece is further underlined by the absence of family social policies. This has the effect of reinforcing the idea of the supremacy of the family and kinship networks in order to tackle the problems of everyday life.

Thus, same-sex desiring people remain to a large extent invisible due to family and kinship relations (Kantsa, 2001; Yannakopoulos, 2010). For example, the invisibility of same-sex desiring women is to be attributed to the significance of family, their relations with parents, and their cultural conceptualization as daughters and mothers (Kantsa, 2007, 2010). In the absence of either a strong lesbian community or a lesbian network that could act as a substitute for family relations, kin preserves its ‘traditional’ role as the principal means of emotional, practical and economic resource. Same-sex desiring women often feel the need to hide their sexual choices from their kin and relatives in order not to endanger their relations. But also in ever-growing cases where women engaged in same-sex relationships feel ‘brave’ enough to come-out to their parents, it is usually the parents who negate, this time, the act of ‘coming-out’, by refusing to talk about the issue, and warn their daughters that they should remain silent on their sexual preferences. Since kin and family relations are still important in Greek society, this is their way of sustaining and preserving the relationship with their daughters. Besides, they often urge them to have a straight marriage. ‘At least you can marry!’ ‘When are you going to get married?’ are the phrases same-sex desiring women in Greece have to face from their parents over and over again.¹⁶

If this is the case, if according to dominant cultural narrations full adult status is acquired through heterosexual marriage blessed with children, why would same-sex desiring people choose to succumb to an institution that in its present form is to a large extent responsible for their exclusion and isolation? In a recent article Kostas Yannakopoulos argues that

Placing the demand for marriage rights in its specific social and cultural context, I would argue that this demand is directly connected to, and based on, both the dissemination of the ideal of ‘marriage’ among gays and lesbians, and, more specifically, on the valorisation of ‘deep and long-lasting relationships’ (that is, stable, ‘emotional’ relationships) and the disdain for both ‘sexual’ relationships and the ‘sexual ghetto’ … In other words, visibility occurs as conformity to heteronormativity. (2010: 274)

In a similar manner, though from another perspective, Evthymios Papataxiarchis in his presentation on gender and kinship transformations in contemporary Greece from 1974 to 1994, concludes that ‘from the viewpoint of potential change, the key aspect of the dominant pattern of Greece is the concept of marriage. The formation of alternative, multiple identities and social arrangements depends on the successful contestation of this ideology’ (Papataxiarchis, 1994: 18).

However, the potential ‘conservative’ character of pro-same-sex marriage politics needs to be specifically contextualized.¹⁷ Eric Fassin, in his article on ‘gay marriage’ debates in France and the USA, writes that, ‘[due to specific conceptualizations of gender, marriage and parenthood] I have felt more comfortable defending same-sex marriage in France than I would have been in the American context. The political implications seem to me different enough to justify this paradoxical situation’ (2001: 220, footnote 10). In his detailed account he shows that in the USA, same-sex marriage was mainly discussed in a discriminatory manner, thus instigating a conservative pro-marriage rhetoric that called for ‘normalization’, while in France a conservative progressive rhetoric on filiation was used to resist the entry of gays and lesbians into the institution of marriage and the family (Fassin, 2001: 227; see also Butler, 2002). Taking into account Fassin’s argument that we cannot discuss same-sex marriage per se but we need to take into account cultural specificities that could make a ‘conservative’ choice ‘progressive’ and vice versa I would argue that in the Greek context pro-same-sex marriage politics is probably more than a assimilation act;¹⁸ it is closely related to issues of rights recognition on terms of sexuality and gender¹⁹ and the acquisition of full citizenship.²⁰ The latter seems to be significant in a society where, according to the Institute for Rights Equality and Diversity 2009 report, public opinion is the most negative among Europeans in regard to the rights of same-sex couples and sexual orientation appears to be the most common ground of discrimination in the country (Pavlou, 2009: 7).²¹

Another dimension is equally important. In his essay on national identity in relation to LGBT rights Mark Graham argues that the European Union actively encourages what he calls ‘shadow places’. ‘These are spaces of citizenship made possible by EU funding where a range of civil society actors, including local grassroots and community organizations, educators, and NGOs, as well as companies, trade unions, and academics can meet and operate. Such spaces are not easily located within the dominant spatial categories of local, regional, national or transnational. They are interstitial spaces, which, intuitively, seem suited to interstitial identities’ (Graham, 2009: 312–313). The recent pro-same-sex marriage campaign in Greece relies heavily on what Graham calls ‘shadow places’. From its beginnings in 2003, and since the recent appeal to the European Court, the same-sex marriage campaign underlines the relation of the major LGBT organizations to perceptions of the EU. In similar manner, the politics of Greek political parties towards same-sex marriage that fluctuate from strong opposition, to rights ascribed to lesbian and gay people, to the will to extend cohabitation rights beyond heterosexual couples, are formed through different perceptions and stances towards the EU, in other words, their denial to be considered too ‘modern’ or their fear of not being ‘European’ enough.

Conclusion

The Greek paradigm illustrates that the relations of European politics, local state policies, and local LGBT movements are complex, shifting and changing. Moreover, it underlines that rights-based politics needs to be connected to context-specific conceptualizations of gender, sexuality and marriage. In Greek society, ‘marriage’ is a hot topic. The low divorce percentage, the practically nonexistent cohabitation percentage, and the small number of children who are born outside of wedlock underline further its cultural significance. Despite a growing number of social, economic and political transformations, which would have allowed for imagining alternative ways of life, ‘marriage’ remains an ideal that is closely related to personal fulfillment, social recognition, and civil and economic rights.

Therefore, the paradox of a registered cohabitation law that excludes same-sex couples can only be explained in relation to the cultural significance of heterosexual coupling in Greece as a prerequisite for the fulfillment of one’s subjectivitiy. Yet, from another perspective the same cultural idiom that values coupling and marriage may be used to explain the recent – almost unified – LGBT organizations’ stance towards pro-marriage agendas. It is because ‘marriage’ maintains its central role in Greek society that members of LGBT organizations make strong claims for it in order to gain full citizenship status. However, as I have tried to argue, it is due to the same cultural idiom that same-sex marriage might be able – potentially – to offer new conceptualizations of gender, sexuality, subjectivity and citizenship.

‘Marriage’ thus becomes the ‘price’ for citizenship.

Footnotes

Notes

Venetia Kantsa is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, at the Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean, Greece and Director of the Laboratory of Family and Kinship Studies at the same Department. She holds a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science (2001) and her research interests focus on anthropology of kinship, anthropology of gender and sexuality, queer theory, anthropology of science, and Greek ethnography. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on women’s same-sex sexuality in Greece, the visibility of same-sex desires, same-sex families, motherhood and new forms of parenthood, the summer lesbian community in Eresos, and the history of the lesbian movement. She has also published extensively on kinship theory, gender epistemology and methodology, politics of sexuality and conceptualizations of citizenship. Her current research focuses on assisted reproduction, shifting conceptualizations of kinship and science, and the distribution of authoritative knowledge in the context of emerging social and technological transformations. She is author of Potentially Friends, Potentially Lovers (Polychromos Planitis, 2010), editor of Motherhood in the Forefront. Recent Research in Greek Ethnography (Aleksándreia, 2013), and co-editor of Gender and Social Sciences in Modern Greece (Aleksándreia, 2010), Language and Sexuality (through and) Beyond Gender (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), Studies on Gender in Anthropology and History (Aleksándreia, 2011).

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