“Civil Partnerships” on the President’s Desk: Ordo Iuris Opinion and Call for a Veto

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The Bills Now in the President’s Hands

On June 25, the Senate passed – without introducing any amendments – the Act on the Status of the Closest Person in a Relationship and the Cohabitation Agreement, along with the accompanying introductory act amending as many as 240 statutes currently in force. Both pieces of legislation have thus completed the full parliamentary process and reached the desk of President Karol Nawrocki, who has 21 days to sign them, veto them, or refer them to the Constitutional Tribunal. This is the first regulation in Poland’s history to allow for the formalization of same-sex unions.

Although the official narrative foregrounds informal heterosexual relationships, the bill itself is the result of work initiated by LGBT activists, lobbied for by them for years, drafted with their participation (as evidenced by the long list of LGBT organizations named in the Regulatory Impact Assessment), and reviewed with their input. Extending the scope of beneficiaries to heterosexual couples primarily serves to artificially inflate the bill’s social significance — without this, it would be difficult to demonstrate any proportionality between the enormous scale of the changes (240 amended statutes) and the statistical marginality of the phenomenon.

That Is Not What This Is Really About

In the public debate, the act is presented as a response to the urgent needs of thousands of people and as a set of practical conveniences. The Ordo Iuris opinion shows that this picture is misleading on several levels.

First, it is not about the group the act is ostensibly meant to serve. Data from countries that have introduced analogous institutions show that same-sex couples’ actual interest in formalizing their relationship is very low — the real uptake rate ranges from 1 to 5 percent of that population. It is hard to speak of a grassroots social need when only a few percent of the people the institution was created for actually use it — especially since its ideological promoters not long ago described marriage itself as an oppressive institution to be “dismantled.” Heterosexual couples, meanwhile, already have full access to the institution designed to regulate, protect, and socially recognize a relationship — marriage. If they knowingly forgo it, one cannot claim the state must “protect” them, given that they themselves have rejected that protection; choosing a life without commitments cannot become the basis for a claim to privileges that exist precisely as recognition of an assumed commitment.

Second, it is not about practical conveniences. The most important matters — healthcare, property, inheritance, or banking — have for years already been accessible to people living in cohabitation or in a same-sex relationship. A joint bank account, a will, access to medical information, powers of attorney, the right to arrange a funeral — all of this already functions today, without creating a new institution.

The heart of the matter lies elsewhere. It concerns three goods that the Constitution places under special protection:

a) Marriage – downgraded from the default form of family life to just one option on a marketplace of household arrangements. It is further weakened by the undermining of marriage’s core principles of permanence (the trivialization of separation) and fidelity (explicitly removed from the act as a requirement). There is no need to formally amend the provisions on marriage in order to weaken its standing — it is enough to create a functionally similar, easier, and less binding alternative. This is confirmed by the example of France cited in the act’s explanatory memorandum, where the French PACS (civil partnership) became a “cheaper substitute” for marriage.

b) Children – they are the first to lose out. Weakening marriage and shifting choices toward less stable forms of relationship translate directly into children’s situations, increasing the risk of poverty and worsening their life prospects. At the same time, pressure is mounting for a “right to a child” for same-sex couples, pursued at the expense of the child’s right to a mother and a father.

c) Family – stripped of its framework, boundaries, and distinct identity, it ceases to differ from other close relationships. The destabilization of the family is an inevitable consequence of weakening marriage and deconstructing parenthood.

Importantly, we know about these consequences today not only from the ideological declarations of the changes’ supporters, but above all from the experience of countries that have already gone down this road. Slogans about “equality,” “love,” and “tolerance” cannot obscure reality.

The Constitutional Core of the Matter

The opinion recalls that the intention behind Article 18 of the Constitution was to grant marriage a privileged status while simultaneously preventing the institutionalization of relationships resembling it. The Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized — including in its opinion on the bills currently under review — that Article 18 grants married couples protections and benefits that are not available to couples who do not want to, or cannot, marry. This protection has both a negative dimension (the exclusivity of marital rights) and a positive one (access to allowances and benefits) — and expanding the circle of beneficiaries undermines both.

Ordo Iuris’s Actions to Date

Submitting the opinion to the President caps a long series of actions taken by the Institute at successive stages of the legislative process:

• even before parliamentary work began, the Institute published an extensive analysis, “Apparent Equality, Real Destruction: On the Consequences of Institutionalizing Informal Relationships”, demonstrating that the bill is unnecessary, unjust, and systemically destabilizes family life;
• at the first-reading stage, the Institute showed that the bill creates competition for marriage in violation of the Constitution;
• in a separate analysis, the Institute demonstrated that the “closest person” bill is a civil partnership under a new name;
• after the Sejm passed the act, the Institute, together with the Center for Life and Family, launched the “Stop Civil Partnerships” petition;
• Ordo Iuris experts also prepared a commentary on the slogans used by supporters of civil partnerships, exposing the rhetoric used in the debate;
• the Institute also drew attention to attempts to introduce solutions recognizing same-sex unions at the level of regulations, even without formal transcription;
• on July 2, together with the Center for Life and Family, the Institute submitted more than 62,500 signatures to the Chancellery of the President under the appeal for a veto.

The Decision Is the President’s

The Ordo Iuris Institute calls on the President of the Republic of Poland, as guardian of the constitutional order, to exercise his veto power and halt changes that weaken marriage and the family at a time when the deepening demographic crisis demands that they be strengthened.

See also:

• The “Same-Sex Union” Act Passed by the Sejm. Time for the President’s Veto
• Same-Sex Adoption Draws Closer to Poland! We Stopped “Express Divorces” — Now We Defend the Children
• The Senate Passed the “Express Divorce” Act. Ordo Iuris Calls on the President for a Veto
• The “Closest Person” Bill Is “Civil Partnerships” Under a New Name
• 8 Reasons Why Poland Must Not (and Need Not) Introduce “Civil Partnerships”

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