By Patrick B. Craine
STRASBOURG, France, March 3, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has determined that a municipality in Poland committed a human rights violation when it denied a homosexual man's petition to inherit his partner's tenancy agreement after the partner died.
The ECHR accepted that the protection of the family founded on the union of a man and a woman, as expressed by the Polish Constitution, was in principle a legitimate reason which might justify a difference in treatment. But they also wrote that, in aiming to safeguard the family, the state “must necessarily take into account developments in society and changes in the perception of social, civil-status and relational issues, including the fact that there is not just one way or one choice in the sphere of leading and living one's family or private life.”
Homosexual “rights” groups are hailing the decision as a victory, while Polish legal experts argue that the decision has no basis in Polish law, and Church and pro-family leaders are decrying it as further evidence of the ECHR's homosexualist “ideology.”
Piotr Kozak, a Polish man born in 1951, had been in a homosexual relationship with “T.B.,” who was the tenant of an apartment run by the Polish city of Szczecin from 1989 until his death in April 1998. Kozak lived in the apartment for most of that time, and they shared a common household.
Following T.B.'s death, Kozak applied to succeed him as tenant of the apartment, but was denied by the municipality in June 1998, who maintained that he had not lived there in several years.
Kozak claimed that he had merely been away for part of that time for work, and argued before the Polish courts that he had a right to succession because he had lived with T.B. for many years and thus they lived in a “de facto marital cohabitation.”
A district court denied his claim in 1999 and upheld the eviction, principally on the basis that Poland does not recognize homosexual unions. That decision was upheld on appeal to the regional court in 2001.
Kozak then brought his complaint to the ECHR in August 2001, alleging that he had been discriminated against on the basis of sexual orientation.
In a unanimous decision, issued yesterday, the ECHR agreed with Kozak's argument that the government had violated article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits discrimination, in conjunction with article 8, which protects the right to respect for one's private and family life.
Though article 14 does not explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, it is open to broad interpretation, and the ECHR has taken it to include sexual orientation. In the present decision, they maintained that “sexual orientation is a concept covered by Article 14.”
They judged that excluding succession of tenancy for homosexual partners “cannot be accepted by the Court as necessary for the protection of the family viewed in its traditional sense.”
Bishop Stanislaw Stefanek of Lomza decried the ruling, telling Wiadomosci24.pl that the ECHR is “not guided by law, but by ideology.”
"There are certain priorities, like the promotion of the sexual activity of young people or of homosexual unions," he said. He stated that the ECHR protects whatever is conducive to early sexual initiation, and labels anything that could impede it, such as parental rights, as “discrimination.” "Of course this is properly disguised under the language of the law, because the [ECHR] not only have to put on their robes, but they also have to use language which bears the stylistics of justice," the bishop added.
"Although our Polish law says otherwise - because as far as I know, so far we have not reached this 'success' of treating homosexual unions equally with marriages - the [ECHR] rulings such as this one are supposed to set guidelines for Polish judges," he said.
Elzbieta Zywar, a judge in the Szczecin district court, told the "Dziennik Gazeta Prawna" daily (DGP), "Poland does not regulate same-sex unions and if it does not regulate this issue, then a court cannot pass verdicts based on non-existent law. Courts are for implementing law, not creating it.”
Malgorzata Lesniak, a Polish solicitor, told DGP, “Polish law does not address the issue of homosexual unions, there are no regulations in this respect, so the verdict [of the ECHR] does not constitute a basis for asserting any claims; it only gives directions to Polish courts."
Tomasz Terlikowski, a prominent pro-family and pro-life commentator and freelance journalist, wrote a strong condemnation of the ruling on his blog.
Inheritance, he wrote, “is based on a family or marital relation,” and is meant to strengthen the family, as it involves passing goods on to later generations. Because homosexuals are not capable of reproducing, he says, “there is no reason to grant them the rights of the family to inherit after one another.”
He points out further that “if [homosexuals] wish to share some of their possessions they can always write up a will.”
“The judges are not interested in the defense of marriage or how logical their decision is,” he continued. “They are too busy with a revolution, with constructing a new human person and a new rainbow civilization. A civilization that is to be built on the corpses of the institution of family and marriage.”
See the European Court of Human Rights ruling here.
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