Apparent equality, real destruction. On the consequences of institutionalizing informal partnerships

Introduction

In light of the statements made by leaders of Poland’s governing coalition parties about an agreement to formalize informal unions and institutionalize civil partnerships (by whatever name), it is worth recalling the reasons why such a solution remains not only unjustified and unfair, but also systemically destabilizing to family life.

It should also be pointed out that, in fact—as the authors of the bill and their political backers openly declare—it is only the first step on the path toward the gradual introduction in Poland of full preferential treatment for informal unions, including same-sex unions, and equating them with marriage—including with the possibility of adopting children. This would render void the special status for marriage as a union of a woman and a man (Article 18 of the Polish Constitution).

To prevent public attention from focusing on this goal, advocates of introducing a new quasi-marital institution are trying to shift the discussion to the level of technical details—as if the issue were solely the form and scope of the privileges conferred. Meanwhile, the real question is another: not how to introduce such privileges, but whether to do so at all.

You don’t start a debate about seat comfort before you’ve decided to board the train. And if the direction of travel is known in advance (indeed, even explicitly declared) and leads toward the degradation of marriage and the destabilization of the family, then prudence dictates refusing to board.

1. An unnecessary and unwanted solution for a marginally small group

1.1. Unnecessary – because practical arrangements are already available without creating a new institution

Proponents of the new regulations argue that same-sex couples “need legal protection” and do not have access to basic civil rights. This is a baseless claim. The most important practical issues — health, property, inheritance, or banking — have been available for years to people living in cohabitation, regardless of gender.

Currently in Poland, cohabiting partners—even same-sex partners—can already, without any ‘partnership’ or additional legislation:

• obtain access to the partner’s health information and medical records,
• take over a deceased partner’s apartment lease,
• freely make a will and name each other as heirs,
• collect the partner’s pay or postal items,
• have a joint bank account and take out joint loans,
• exercise the right to refuse to testify — just like spouses,
• grant each other powers of attorney for representation before banks, the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), the National Health Fund (NFZ), or tax offices, and, by means of a notarial deed, regulate property matters,
• receive a funeral benefit for covering a partner’s funeral expenses.

In other words: what is actually needed in everyday life is already attainable.

Creating a new institution does not solve any real problem — it is merely symbolic and ideological. If couples’ fundamental life needs can already be achieved today under the current law, then the justification for a new regulation becomes purely political rather than practical.

1.2. Unwanted – as actual interest in formalizing same-sex unions is extremely low

Supporters of the institutionalization of same-sex unions also argue that there is a ‘mass, grassroots need’ for the introduction of a new legal institution. Meanwhile, data from countries that have implemented such regulations show quite the opposite.

It is visible if one compares:

• the number of registered partnerships actually entered into (official data), to
• the number of ‘same-sex relationships’ declared by LGBT communities, based on their own statistical assumptions (5% of the population is LGBT^[1], 40% of them are in a relationship^[2], 87% declare a desire to formalize^[3]).

If we take this narrative as a starting point, the indicator of actual interest—that is, the percentage of same-sex couples who actually use the institution offered by the state—is as follows:

Country	Years	Number of couples	Same-sex couples interested in formalization (according to LGBT organizations)	Actual interest indicator
Germany	2001-2008	approx. 15,000	960,000	3.1 percent
France	2000-2003	16,651	660,000	2 percent
Norway	1993-2001	1,293	50,000	5.2 percent
Sweden	1995-2002	1,526	102,000	1.5 percent
Spain	2006-2009	4,606	510,000	0.9 percent
Czech Republic	2007-2010	905	118,000	0.8 percent
Italy	2017-2020	11,020	742,000	1.5 percent

The conclusion is unambiguous: An institution that in public debate is presented as “urgently needed by hundreds of thousands of people” is in practice used by 1–5 percent of the population for whom it was supposedly created.

Conclusion:

1. Actual interest in civil unions is very low.
2. The institutionalization of same-sex unions is not an expression of a grassroots social need, but rather of a political agenda. There is no question of genuine social pressure.

1.3. Marginal scale of the phenomenon

To assess whether a new law has real social significance, one should compare the number of registered same-sex unions with the adult population of the country in question. Only then does this allow us to see the real proportions—and answer honestly: are we talking about a socially significant phenomenon, or rather a marginal construct used for symbolic and ideological purposes.

The results of such a comparison are presented in the table below:

Country	Years	Number of couples	Population of the country at the time (total/adults)	Per 1,000 adult population
Germany	2001-2008	approx. 15,000	82.3 / 66 million	0.23‰
France	2000-2003	16,651	60.8 / 47 million	0.35‰
Norway	1993-2001	1,293	4.3 / 3.4 million	0.38‰
Sweden	1995-2002	1,526	8.8 / 7 million	0.21‰
Spain	2006-2009	4,606	44.5 / 35 million	0.13‰
Czech Republic	2007-2010	905	10.5 / 8.8 million	0.10‰
Italy	2017-2020	11,020	60.6 / 49 million	0.22‰

We therefore see that in Western countries, the actual interest in this institution falls within the range of 0.1‰ to 0.04‰ of the adult population – that is, from one to four hundredths of a percent. It’s an almost statistically invisible phenomenon, though portrayed in public debate as a global social revolution.

If we applied these proportions to Poland (approx. 31 million adult inhabitants), we would obtain the following number of same-sex civil partnerships entered into over approximately the first 5 years in total:

Scenario	Per 1,000 adult population	Projected total number of potential same-sex civil partnerships in Poland over the first 5 years
Germany	0.23‰	approx. 7,200
France	0.35‰	approx. 11,000
Norway	0.38‰	approx. 11,900
Sweden	0.21‰	approx. 6,600
Spain	0.13‰	approx. 4,100
Czech Republic	0.10‰	approx. 3,100
Italy	0.22‰	approx. 6,900

In a realistic scenario based on European data, this means 3,000–11,000 civil partnerships in Poland over the first few years in total. For comparison: this is a level well below the margin of error in public opinion polls.

Meanwhile, the authors of the proposed law claim that there are 400,000 same-sex unions in Poland.

From the above comparison with the data and the experience of other European countries, we may conclude that the adoption of the institution of quasi-marriage, constitutionally flawed and culturally revolutionary to the detriment of society as a whole, is not actually dictated by the interests of any significant group of citizens.

We are therefore dealing with a phenomenon that is demographically extremely marginal, yet used as a tool for the systemic transformation of law, language, and the cultural meaning of marriage.

2. A first injustice

The introduction of civil partnerships (under any name) is not only, as we have seen, unnecessary and unwanted, but also means granting tax breaks, inheritance rights, social benefits, and retirement benefits to couples who do not bear the costs of procreation and raising children. It is a flagrant injustice toward married couples, who genuinely invest in the future of the national community, sacrificing income, time, energy, and professional opportunities to raise the next generation of citizens.

These two groups are radically different from each other. While married couples usually have children (in the case of an infertile man and an infertile woman, their situation is incidental) and in this way make a significant contribution to the common good, homosexual couples make no such contribution, because by nature (by the very essence of their union) they cannot have children. This means that married couples with children generate future tax revenues by giving birth to and raising new taxpayers. In turn, same-sex unions:

• do not contribute to maintaining the generational continuity of society — by nature, they cannot give life, and thus they make use of the labor of children whom they themselves did not raise,
• do not bear the costs of raising offspring,
• have two independent incomes without career breaks related to maternity and childcare,

Moreover, the social significance of marriage—as the foundation of the family and a factor in the nation’s biological and cultural continuity—justifies treating marriage as an institution of public law, including measures to support its stability, both through incentives (tax benefits) and by making its dissolution more difficult and bringing a public element—the court—into the relationship. Informal unions do not enter into these public commitments, and no public institution safeguards their stability. Thus, there is also no basis for society to especially reward them for mere “feelings,” which have no legal significance. After all, one might just as well grant privileges on the basis of state-certified friendship.

Spending hundreds of millions of zlotys over the coming years (lower revenues from income tax and other taxes, costs for the Polish national health fund – NFZ) to affirm the romance of two men or two women is not only not an expression of “equality,” but a blatant denial of it—this is discrimination against marriage.

3. A second injustice

Seeing negligible interest in the institution of civil partnerships in the countries that introduced it, and the generally marginal scale of the phenomenon, the authors of the Polish bill decided to “hide” inconvenient statistics and expand the target group to include heterosexual couples.

This tactic is intended to create the appearance of broad social applicability – without extending it to heterosexual couples, it would be embarrassing and would expose the statistical marginality of the subculture interested in it.

However, such a solution is also deeply unfair, though for different reasons. Heterosexual couples already have full access to the institution that regulates, protects, and grants social recognition to a relationship, that is, marriage. If they knowingly choose not to marry, one cannot claim that the state must “protect” them, because they themselves reject that protection. You cannot simultaneously choose a “commitment-free” life and demand privileges that exist precisely as a reward for accepting a commitment that creates appropriate and stable—at least in principle—environments for bearing and raising future generations of citizens. Choosing to assume no obligation cannot serve as a basis for a claim to privileges.

The absurdity of such a solution can be compared to:

• “driver’s licenses for those who don’t want the obligations of a driver” – a situation in which the state introduces a special driver’s license for those who don’t want to take the exam, don’t want points on their license, and don’t want to be liable for accidents – but still expect similar privileges to drivers.
• or to pensions for those who don’t want to pay social security contributions – a situation in which one group pays contributions their entire life, and the other says “we prefer no obligations” – and the state responds: „Okay, you’re entitled to a comparable pension, so that no one feels excluded.”

The obvious—let’s say it outright—senselessness of the above solution compels one to seek its justification elsewhere. In reality, it’s not about any “regulation and protection of informal relationships” but about social engineering—about creating an institution competing with marriage and mechanisms discouraging marriage, and thus, the further destabilization of family life.

But why would anyone want to discourage getting married and destabilize family life?

4. A page from history

The answer lies in the history of the ideology of the LGBT movement.

Homosexual activists and theorists have expressed a critical stance toward the institution of marriage for decades. They saw it as a tool of patriarchal and heteronormative oppression that perpetuated social inequalities and restricted individual freedom. For example, a manifesto crucial to shaping the ideology of the “gay liberation movement,” Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto from 1970 states: “Traditional marriage is a rotten, oppressive institution. (…) Marriage is a contract which smothers both people, denies needs, and places impossible demands on both people”^[4].

The entire history of this movement in the field of family law has focused on challenging the dominant concept of the family and popularizing “family pluralism,” which promotes unconventional and nonmarital family forms. It’s always been about revolting and tearing down institutions.

This is why those activists opposed the very idea of “same-sex marriage”—they believed that demanding marriage would be a betrayal of the sexual revolution project, because it would mean accepting the norms they wanted to destroy.

Despite this resistance, it is becoming clear to some in the LGBT community that confrontational politics, combined with a frontal attack on marriage and calls for its abolition, is not gaining public support. In 1990, was a true earthquake with the publication of the book After the Ball^[5], which upended the LGBT approach. It begins with the words:

“The homosexual revolution has failed. Not completely and not finaly , but it’s a failure just the same. The Stonewall riots in 1969 (…) marked the birth of “gay liberation”. As we write these lines, twenty years have passed. In those years, the combined efforts of the gay community have won a handful of concessions in a handful of localities. (…) We should have done far better.”^[6]

Then the authors, specialists in psychology and marketing, propose: „practical – let us emphasize, practical – plan. (…) The campaign we outline in this book, though complex, de¬ pends centrally upon a program of unabashed propaganda, firmly grounded in long-established principles of psychology and advertising.”^[7]

Let’s skip the “principles” discussed in detail in the book, such as “Principle No. 5. Portray gays as victims” or „Principle No. 6. Give potential protectors a just cause.” The most important thing is that it brings about the crystallization of a new political doctrine within homosexual communities, which will be consistently pursued over the coming decades – a two-pronged tactic:

• “old target”: “providing real alternatives to marriage”^[8] – to weaken marriage from the outside, by introducing a competing legal form (PACS – civil solidarity agreement in France) , civil partnerships, formalized cohabitations);
• “new goal”: to redefine marriage itself – to weaken it from within, to deconstruct it to the point where it comes to mean a union among any group of people entered into for any length of time. And this is the opposite of what marriage is.

5. Consequences – destabilization

“Providing real alternatives to marriage” is, in practice, the process known in sociology as “the deinstitutionalization of marriage,” meaning that marriage gradually loses the status of a normative institution (default, expected, and supported) and is degraded to the level of one of the options.

If the legislator tells the citizens: „you can choose marriage — but right alongside there’s also a no-strings-attached version with similar privileges”, you don’t have to attack marriage directly to weaken it. The consequences are:

5.1. Weakening of the expectation of permanence and faithfulness – glorification of irresponsibility and selfishness

Marriage as an institution by definition entails permanence and mutual fidelity. With civil partnerships, it’s quite the opposite. The explanatory memoranda for subsequent draft bills explicitly point to:

• a departure from the assumption of relationship permanence — they emphasize that they are “by definition less stable than marriage”^[9] and “by definition more flexible”^[10] they praise “greater autonomy of individuals in a relationship” as well as “greater independence of individuals in a partnership in shaping their family relationship.”
• abandonment of the requirement of fidelity – „the concepts of fidelity and cohabitation have been replaced with more open and flexible concepts of loyalty, respect and shared family life”^[11].

If the state grants similar rights and privileges both to unions that involve a requirement and presumption of permanence and fidelity (marriages) and to unions for which such requirements are not imposed, then it obviously considers these characteristics irrelevant.

Thus, it contributes to family breakdown, which is one of the main sources of crime among young people, suicide attempts, addictions, teenage pregnancies, childhood obesity, and academic difficulties.

Their costs are borne by the entire community. Conservative estimates from a few years ago indicate costs of £48 billion per year in the United Kingdom^[12] and nearly PLN 6 billion in Poland^[13].

5.2. A facade of stability

The concern professed by supporters of civil partnerships about increasing the number of people living in stable, formalized relationships turns out, in fact, to be a charade. After all, the supposed permanence of a union that can be easily dissolved is only a pretense – it’s like installing fake seat belts in a car: something is “buckled,” but there is no real protection. People who would enter into a civil partnership instead of marriage would be entering an institution that is by definition less stable than marriage, which on a broader scale would mean a decrease, not an increase, in the level of stability. To introduce stability, an inherently unstable tool is being proposed—hidden behind slogans like “flexibility,” “autonomy,” or “freedom of choice”. It’s like treating insomnia with caffeine or trying to improve concentration with alcohol: not only does it not work, it does exactly the opposite.

According to estimates attached to the draft law on civil partnerships, the number of partnerships concluded (under one name or another) may initially be about 10,000, rising to 70,000 per year after 10 years. This means a total of 354,000 civil partnerships over 10 years.

Such a process means a shift in social choices toward less binding, more unstable forms of relationships. This entails serious demographic and social consequences, observed, among other places, in France, which the authors of the proposal cite:

• a further decline in the number of marriages,
• an increase in the number of unstable types of relationships,
• a higher proportion of nonmarital births,
• a decline in fertility.

For children, this also means a higher risk of poverty, poorer academic performance, greater susceptibility to addictions, and a greater likelihood of coming into conflict with the law.

6. A slippery slope

Changes in the understanding of marriage and family do not happen all at once – they resemble a slow one-degree adjustment of a ship’s rudder. At first, the movement seems minimal, almost imperceptible. But after a few miles it turns out that the ship is already heading in a completely different direction – and there’s no easy way to turn back.

The introduction of civil partnerships, on the one hand, accelerates and reinforces some already existing processes that destabilize the family, and on the other hand, sets in motion a spiral of new phenomena—consistent with the pattern whereby a change in the law leads to social change, which in turn triggers other changes in the law. Every subsequent turn of such a spiral increasingly distorts the understanding of marriage and of the family based on it.

Destabilization of family life is just the beginning. The introduction of an institution granting same-sex couples even some of the rights and privileges of spouses would constitute a breach in the Polish legal order, one that would then be progressively widened, among other things, in the name of the principle of equality and non-discrimination. On the other side, there is not the slightest intention to stop halfway—there is a plan to gradually escalate demands, a desire to get a foot in the door so that it can then be opened ever wider. This is clearly indicated by:

• Statements by the authors themselves and supporters of the Polish civil partnership bill expressed explicitly in the explanatory memorandum to the 2018 draft civil partnership bill^[14], and now openly expressed in the public debate^[15].
• Official demands of LGBT organizations (expressed, among other things, during the so-called “Equality Parades”) and their own draft bill on marriage equality^[16];
• Practice observed abroad:
  The introduction of civil partnerships was preceded—as in the Netherlands—by a process of successively granting cohabiting couples additional rights and obligations, akin to those previously reserved exclusively for married couples.
  – after the introduction of civil partnerships, their rights are systematically expanded, including allowing same-sex couples to adopt children;
  – all 22 European countries that have changed the legal definition of marriage (which automatically gives same-sex couples the ability to adopt children) had previously introduced civil partnerships, and where marriage has not yet been redefined after the introduction of same-sex civil partnerships, such demands are continually being made.

Where does this process end? It has no end. Or rather, the end is the end of marriage, depriving it of any meaning, reducing it to a label devoid of deeper content. At the same time, the rights of same-sex couples are now being expanded not only to include the option to adopt children, but also national insurance coverage for IVF for lesbian couples and access to surrogacy services for gay couples. The experience of countries more “advanced” on this path also shows that subsequent demands concern the possibility of registering relationships consisting of three or more people cohabiting, and even registering “multi-parent” families, where it is recognized, for example, that a child has three “fathers” instead of one father and one mother.

Arguments for the institutionalization of same-sex unions—based on appeals to love, equality, diversity, dignity, and tolerance—can be applied, with virtually no changes, also to justify the institutionalization of multi-person unions.

Active lobbying is already underway for the legal recognition of multi-person unions. Organizations such as Organization for Polyamory and Ethical Non-Monogamy „OPEN” state on their websites: “Together, we can normalize non-monogamy. By promoting visibility, challenging stereotypes, and celebrating love in all its forms, we can pave the way for a world where non-monogamous families and relationships are not just accepted but celebrated.”

This narrative is gaining wider reach and social acceptance thanks to TV series and film productions that systematically normalize polyamory, portraying it as an increasingly ordinary and uncontroversial family model.

And it works. Public support for polygamy and polyandry is inexorably rising. In 2023, most adult Americans under the age of 30 expressed acceptance of “open marriages”^[17]. Another survey from the same year found that about one in eight Americans had sex outside their everyday union—with their partner’s consent^[18]. In terms of public support, polyamorous relationships are now where same-sex relationships were in the mid-1990s —a mere three decades ago^[19].

A change in the law accompanies (and sometimes precedes) changes in public opinion. In 2020, Somerville became the first city in the U.S. to adopt regulations allowing the registration of multi-person civil partnerships (domestic partnership) among unrelated people who live together and are “in a relationship of mutual support, caring and commitment and intend to remain in this relationship” and “consider themselves to be a family”^[20]. Since then, all local regulations and benefits relating to marriage apply to such unions^[21].

Polish activists speak openly about child adoption. However, they do not add what their foreign colleagues point out: “A parentage regime that fully integrates same-sex couples reduces the salience of biology and gender and instead centers parental conduct, which need not be cabined by a dyadic parental unit, either inside or outside marriage.”^[22]

Limiting the number of parents to two is no longer considered necessary or logical. In the United States, at least seven states^[23] – California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Nevada, Vermont, Washington – and the District of Columbia^[24]have laws that allow courts to formally recognize more than two people as the legal parents of a child. Similar regulations are being debated in the Netherlands and Germany, and in the Canadian province of Quebec, the Supreme Court in April of this year gave the government 12 months to legally recognize such “multi-parent” families.

The process of the breakdown of the institution of marriage does not occur spontaneously, on its own. “Family is what you make it,”we read on the websites of organizations such as Chosen Family Law Center. Further on, we find a “clarification”: “ Our definition of family is people committed to be there for each other no matter what”^[25].

7. Other consequences

7.1. The acceleration of demographic collapse

Unmarried couples are much less likely to have children—this is a consistent demographic pattern confirmed in many countries. It is worth mentioning in this context the case of France, especially since it is precisely the French model (PACS) that is cited by the authors of the Polish draft bill on civil partnerships.

Twelve years after the introduction of PACS, the results were unequivocal (perhaps for this reason the distinction between PACS and informal unions was later abandoned in official statistics)^[26]. The table below shows the percentage of people who are in a relationship and have at least one child:

Age category	Relationship type
	Unmarried couple	PACS (civil partnership)	Marriage
20–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44	16% 36% 61% 79% 84%	27% 43% 68% 81% 82%	50% 68% 85% 93% 94%

It shows that, for example, among married 27-year-olds, 68 percent have at least one child. Among people of the same age who were in a PACS, only 43 percent had a child.

The data clearly show: the less formalized the relationship, the lower the readiness for parenthood. Marriage—as an institution characterized by the expectation of permanence and responsibility—creates conditions that favor the decision to have a child. In partnerships (regardless of their name), the fertility rate declines significantly.

This is an important warning for the Polish legislator: by importing the French model, one also imports its consequences—and among them a decline in birth rates by shifting relationships from a basis of responsibility toward greater “flexibility,” “autonomy” and “independence”.

7.2. Indoctrination at school

Another consequence of the institutionalization of same-sex cohabitations is the expansion of the legal definition of the family (“family life”) beyond the union of a man and a woman and their children. This will justify pressure to change educational content, school curricula, and public-awareness campaigns so that they present “family diversity” as an axiom, and pressure on schools to present all forms of relationships “equally”.

Opposition to new norms may result in state interference in family life—namely, a finding that imparting to children views contrary to the official line is against their best interests. For example:

In Norway, a Christian immigrant family from Romania (Ruth and Marius Bodnariu) was accused by the Norwegian child protection services (Barnevernet) of “Christian indoctrination” and “lack of openness to diversity”. In 2015, Norwegian authorities took away their five children, placing them in foster care. The allegations included, among other things, imparting traditional beliefs about family and marriage to children.

8. Conclusion

We stand on the threshold of a revolutionary decision to undermine the cultural, constitutional, and natural institution of marriage. The lobby pushing for revolution does not conceal its ultimate goals, which are to deprive marriage as the union of a woman and a man of all signs of uniqueness. All the functions carried out by spouses in our cultural context, including raising children, creating a safe haven and the first school of responsibility, are to be broadly opened to informal relationships, without factors that support stability and security, without natural female and male role models.

Under the dictates of this revolution, all social institutions must undergo change. From schools, through religion and culture, to civil, criminal, and even commercial law. A foretaste of the scale of social engineering in Poland was The Left’s prematurely submitted bill on civil partnerships, which, across 397 pages, amended upward of a hundred statutes. And even so, it was merely a bolder step, not a full realization of the declared goals.

At this stage, it is necessary to stop the destructive wave that is striking the family and the constitutional and social order of the Republic of Poland.

Summary

A new institution is unnecessary—practical streamlining measures already exist

Currently, cohabiting partners, including those of the same sex, can—without any ‘partnership’ or additional legislation—among other things:

• obtain access to information about a partner’s health and to review medical records, freely make a will, and designate each other as heirs,
• collect the partner’s pay or postal items,
• have a joint bank account and take out joint loans,
• grant powers of attorney to have themselves represented at banks, the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS), the National Health Fund (NFZ), or tax offices,
• by way of a notarized agreement—settle property matters.

Same-sex couples are not interested in formalizing their relationships

The indicator of actual interest, i.e., the share of same-sex couples who actually use the institution offered by the state, is 1–5 percent of the population for whom it was allegedly created.

Obviously, the larger the reported number of people identifying as LGBT, the smaller the resulting percentage of them who have entered into civil partnerships.

Marginal scale of the phenomenon

In Western countries the proportion of formalized same-sex unions ranges from 0.01% to 0.04% of the adult population—that is, from one to four hundredths of a percent. It’s an almost statistically invisible phenomenon, though portrayed in public debate as a global social revolution.

If these proportions were applied to Poland, we would have, within the first 5 years, a total of between 3,000 and 11,000 registered same-sex unions. So, from several hundred to 2,000 per year.

Injustice

The institutionalization of same-sex unions also means granting tax relief, inheritance rights, social benefits, and pension protections to couples who do not bear the costs of procreation and raising children. It is a flagrant injustice against married couples, who genuinely invest in the future of the political community, sacrificing income, time, energy, and career opportunities to raise the next generation of citizens.

More injustice

An attempt to conceal embarrassingly low statistics by expanding the project to heterosexual couples.

Heterosexual couples already have full access to the institution that regulates, protects, and grants social recognition to a relationship, that is, marriage.

In fact, it’s about creating mechanisms that discourage marriage.

Consequences – destabilization

Marriage as an institution by definition entails permanence and mutual fidelity. Civil partnerships, quite the opposite. The explanatory memoranda for subsequent draft bills explicitly point to:

• a departure from the assumption of the permanence of the relationship—they emphasize that they are “by definition less stable than marriage” and “by definition more flexible“; they praise “greater autonomy of people in the relationship“, as well as “greater independence of people in a partnership in shaping their family relationship”.
• abandonment of the fidelity requirement – “the concepts of fidelity and marital cohabitation were replaced with more open and flexible concepts of loyalty, respect, and shared family life.”

If the state grants similar rights and privileges both to unions that entail a requirement and a presumption of permanence and fidelity (marriages) and to unions for which such requirements are not imposed, then:

• It considers these characteristics irrelevant,
• thus contributes to the breakdown of the family, which is one of the main sources of crime among young people, suicide attempts, addictions, teenage pregnancies, childhood obesity, and academic problems.

Their costs are borne by the entire community. Conservative estimates from a few years ago put the figure at 48 billion pounds annually in the United Kingdom and nearly 6 billion PLN in Poland.

The project offers a facade of stability. It’s a charade, for the permanence of a union that can be dissolved without difficulty is only an illusion.

A practical consequence of the Polish bill on civil partnerships would be a shift in social choices toward less binding, more unstable forms of relationships. The effects:

• a further decline in the number of marriages,
• an increase in the number of unstable types of relationships,
• a higher proportion of nonmarital births,
• a further decline in fertility.

A slippery slope

Destabilization of family life is just the beginning. The introduction of an institution granting same-sex couples even some of the rights and privileges of spouses would constitute a breach in the Polish legal order, one that would then be progressively widened, among other things, in the name of the principle of equality and non-discrimination.

The argument in favor of the institutionalization of same-sex unions—based on appeals to love, equality, diversity, dignity, and tolerance—can be used, with virtually no changes, to justify the institutionalization of multi-person unions as well.

The acceleration of demographic collapse

Marriage—as an institution characterized by the expectation of permanence and responsibility—creates conditions that favor the decision to have a child. In partnerships (regardless of their name), the fertility rate declines significantly.

Indoctrination at school

The institutionalization of same-sex cohabitation also entails expanding the legal definition of family (“family life”) beyond the union between a woman and a man alongside their children. This will justify pressure to change educational content, school curricula, and public-awareness campaigns so that they present “family diversity” as an axiom, and pressure on schools to present all forms of relationships “equally”.

Adv. Rafał Dorosiński – member of the Management Board of Ordo Iuris and the Center for Life and Family

This text includes excerpts from the book: R. Dorosiński, In Defense of Marriage. A Response to the Attack on the Foundations of Civilization (W obronie małżeństwa – Odpowiedź na uderzenie w fundament cywilizacji), 2025

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^[1] In 2016, the Polish Sexological Society stated in its official position that “homosexual people constitute 5 percent of the population,” according to: W. Ferfecki, How many LGBT+ people are there in Poland? The data may surprise, “Rzeczpospolita”, December 18, 2024.

^[2] M. Winiewski, M. Świder, The social situation of LGBTA people in Poland. Report for 2019–2020, Warsaw 2021. Text available online: https://kph.org.pl/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Rapot_Duzy_Digital-1.pdf. This document is cited in the explanatory memorandum to the 2025 draft bill on civil partnerships.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] C. Witmann, Refugees from Amerika: A Gay Manifesto, 1970.

^[5] M. Kirk, H. Madsen, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s, New York 1989. The book is based on a series of highly dubious assumptions—for example, that people with homosexual tendencies allegedly constitute 10 percent of the population—and on manipulative rhetorical devices that blur important differences, e.g., by equating homosexuality with left-handedness.

^[6] M. Kirk, H. Madsen, After the Ball… op. cit.

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] P. Ettelbrick, Since When Is Marriage a Path to Liberation?, “OUT/LOOK National Gay and Lesbian Quarterly” 1989, no. 6.

^[9] Explanatory memorandum to the bill on civil partnerships, print no. 552, February 16, 2012.

^[10] Ibid.

^[11] Explanatory memorandum to the draft Act on Civil Partnerships (2025), op. cit. (emphasis mine)

^[12] Relationships Foundation, Cost of Family Failure Index, 2016.

^[13] https://ordoiuris.pl/konferencja-naukowa/koszty-rozpadu-rodzin-i-malzenstw-w-polsce/

^[14] A parliamentary bill on civil partnerships introduced by a group of MPs from the Nowoczesna parliamentary group on April 24, 2018. The explanatory memorandum stated: “The bill’s sponsor is aware that the provisions being introduced regarding the regulation of same-sex unions are not the final piece of legislation. Only the introduction of marriage equality in Poland—i.e., the possibility of marriage for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples—is considered such an act.”

^[15] See, among others, the position of Amnesty International, submitted in the consultations on the draft bill from print no. 1457 (questionnaire no. 40473) stating that the introduction of civil partnerships “still does not provide full legal protection for same-sex couples” and asserting that “a reinterpretation of marriage is necessary.”

^[16] Association “Love Does Not Exclude” (Miłość Nie Wyklucza), Draft bill of February 14, 2016 on marriage equality. The draft provides, among other things, for amending Article 1 § 1 of the Family and Guardianship Code to read as follows: “A marriage is contracted when two persons, whether of different or the same sex, who are present at the same time, declare before the head of the civil registry office that they are entering into marriage with each other.”

^[17] K. Parker, R. Minkin, 3. Views of divorce and open marriages… op. cit.

[18] L. Sanders, How many Americans prefer non-monogamy in relationships?, “YouGov”, February 21, 2023, https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/45271-how-many-americans-prefer-nonmonogamy-relationship

^[19] Growing Public Support for Same-Sex Marriage, 02/07/2012 (updated 02/16/2012), https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/02/07/growing-public-support-for-same-sex-marriage/.

^[20] City of Somerville, Ordinance no. 2020-16, 6/25/2020. Text available online: https://jtforward2.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-16-Domestic-Partnerships.pdf

^[21] Cf. ibid., art. 2-505.

^[22] D. NeJaime, Marriage Equality… op. cit.

^[23] See R.A. Simon, Polyparenting: When Children Have More Than Two Parents, https://americanbar.org/groups/family_law/resources/family-advocate/2023-summer/polyparenting-when-children-have-more-two-parents; The Next Normal: State Will Recognize Multiparent Families, “The Washington Post,” January 28, 2022.

^[24] First, in 2009, the District of Columbia introduced the institution of a de facto parent, allowing for the recognition of custody and visitation rights for persons who are not the child’s biological parents but who, in practice, have acted as a parent. In 2019, this institution was expanded so that a person could be recognized as a de facto parent “if an individual has held himself or herself out as a child’s parent with the agreement of the child’s parent or, if there are 2 parents, both parents.” See District of Columbia Code § 16-831.01(1)(A)(iii) (2019), https://code.dccouncil.gov/us/dc/council/code/sections/16-831.01.

^[25] See What Is a Chosen Family?,https://chosenfamilylawcenter.org/mission-statement.

^[26] www.ined.fr/fr/tout-savoir-population/chiffres/france/naissance-fecondite/naissances-hors-mariage/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Source of cover photo: Canva