by Erin Donaghue

Jirka Lacek was with friends at the Erra Café on March 15 when he got the news that the Czech Republic had become Central Europe’s first country to legalize same-sex domestic partnerships. That afternoon, the lower house of Parliament had overturned—by the minimum number of votes—a veto by President Václav Klaus of legislation passed in January.

The president had threatened to veto the bill before Parliament first voted on it, partly because he felt the state would regulate people’s private lives, though he didn’t elaborate on how allowing certain couples legal status would regulate their lives more than keeping them from it. Klaus also said he’d received hundreds of letters in opposition to domestic partnership and few in  favor of it. “So I sent a letter to help his statistics,” says Lacek, who is gay. Klaus’s office wrote back, thanking him for his opinion and reiterating the president’s reasons for opposing the legislation. After Klaus vetoed it in February, it was unclear whether the partnerships would have the necessary support to override the veto.

“This should be a nonpolitical topic,” Lacek says. “If someone decided to make a big deal out of it, it was the president because he was trying to show that he was very important—that's my opinion—and I'm so glad that Parliament showed him he's not that important.”

The registered domestic partnerships initiative is not a new issue for gays here. It has been on the Parliamentary agenda a handful of times in the past decade and has also been the subject of Cabinet proposals. How much lobbying did it take for this to finally go through? “A lot,” says Tereza Kodícková of the Gay and Lesbian League . Lobbying was  lost on certain parties—the Christian Democrats, for one—though the league attempted to steer clear of partisan politics in order to convince everyone in Parliament that being gay is neither against the law nor against human nature.

According to Kodícková, had this issue been the subject of a popular vote, the initiative would have failed again. While some polls place public support for domestic partnerships at around 60 percent—though only about a third of the population believes gay couples should be allowed to adopt—the country’s view of gays can be largely based on stereotypes. However, opinions have been changing slowly but steadily in favor of gays in recent years, with only some religious leaders and adherents remaining the most stalwartly opposed to legal recognition of partnerships. The population is now confronted with gay culture in everything from the nightly news to reality shows. The attitude change isn't much, but it's a step—“The view in the ’90s of gays was largely of promiscuity, rumors about gay nightclubs, and AIDS,” Kodícková says.

The ruling is not perfect; several concessions had to be made in order for it to pass, such as no legal adoption or shared last names. “It was a huge debate internally, but it's something rather than nothing,” Kodícková says. “Now it's passed, and we can amend it.” She hopes that it will act as at least a symbolic success for gays, and plans to see many couples take active advantage of it, especially those who have had long-term relationships and were persecuted under Communism. “The most important battle is internal,” she says. “More people need to come out for the progress to continue.”

Lacek doesn't have a partner and hasn't yet found himself in a relationship with someone he'd make a lifelong commitment to, nor does he have any friends who plan to rush out and get hitched. “I really want to see and find out how many gay couples will use it,” he says. In a country where couples of both orientations often live together for years, and even raise families, without getting married, it domestic partnerships might prove as symbolic as they are historic. “But [straight couples] still had the choice of marrying,” he says. “Gay couples, before, didn't have any choice.”  

previously published in Provokator Print Magazine (April)

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