The governmental resolution drafted by the Ministry of Social Security and Labor proposed allowing the parliament to discuss a bill that aims at amending the Constitution. The proposed changes would equate family and marriage.
The wording was opposed by Justice Minister Remigijus Šimašius of the ruling Liberal Movement. Based on his proposal, the Cabinet agreed to state that the government was not giving any opinion on the matter.
Social Security and Labor Minister Donatas Jankauskas says that people related by blood should not be excluded from the definition of family.
"The government proposed that the Seimas discussed the article on amendment of the Constitution, noting that the relationship of entering into or forming a family was subject to legal regulation in Article 38. Nevertheless, people related by blood should not be eliminated from the definition of family," Jankauskas told journalists after the meeting.
"Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius supports a more specific family definition, i.e., linking the definition of family to marriage. However, as it is a dispute of values, the government hands it down to the Seimas," the prime minister's adviser Virgis Valentinavičius cited his opinion to BNS.
Some MPs and a number of NGOs oppose the motion to ammend the Constitution, saying that the proposed provisions are discriminatory towards single parents, unmarried households or same-sex couples. MP Aušrinė Marija Pavilionienė of the Social Democrats, who is among the most vocal opponents of the initiative, says that the state must not interfere into the citizens' private affairs, adding that such legislation on morality brings the country back to the 19 century.
Some analysts believe that the ammendment, which does not require a referendum but merely two votes in the Parliament with a 3-month interval, is a conservative-led attempt to prevent any future moves towards legalizing same-sex marriage or partnership.
In late December, the parliament gave its initial backing to a draft constitution proposal stating that "family shall be concluded upon free mutual consent by a man and a woman to enter into marriage." The parliament is scheduled to hold the first hearing of this issue during the upcoming spring session.
The constitutional amendment was drafted by 98 members of the Lithuanian parliament after the Constitutional Court ruled in September that provisions of Lithuania's state family concept, which only lists people living in wedlock as family, runs counter the Constitution.
According to the court's ruling, “the institute of marriage is a historically formed family pattern, which undoubtedly has exclusive value in public life."
At the same time, the court said that a family can be built other bases than marriage, adding that the form of a relationship did not have major bearing upon the constitutional concept of family.
The current version of Article 38 of the Constitution suggests that family is the basis of society and the state, that family, motherhood, fatherhood, and childhood are under the protection and care of the state, that marriage is concluded upon free mutual consent of a man and a woman.
According to a poll carried out last November, 46 percent of Lithuanians agree that family can take other forms than marriage while 41 percent think otherwise, with the remaining 13 percent abstaining.
