Same-sex Relationships: Why Do Many Latvian Politicians Resist Them? / Daniela Gerda Baranova, Samanta Mezmale

D.G. Baranova, S. Melmale

Abstract: Latvia has the second-lowest Rainbow Index in Europe and is among six European Union countries where neither same-sex marriages nor civil unions are legal (ILGA-Europe, 2020b). There were multiple petitions signed by 10,000 people to initiate the legalization of these laws, however, they were all rejected by Saeima. That is why we decided to understand the rationale behind Saeima politicians' resistance to pro-LGBT laws (more specifically same-sex marriage and civil union), and whether such resistance is strong. First, we performed document analysis: identified arguments of 114 politicians against same-sex marriage and civil union (SSMCU) legalization from the publicly available sources and semi-structured interviews. We concluded that all the arguments we identified could be summarised into eight categories: unnaturalness, traditional Latvian family values, religion, demographics, Constitution, rejection of discrimination, social reluctance and immoral. We discovered that there are differences between the most common arguments in the world and Latvia, as well as the most common argument expressed by Latvian politicians is about traditional Latvian family values. Second, we implemented moral analysis to determine how strong each of the arguments is. To prepare these arguments for our moral evaluation, we reformulated each of them for strengthening their soundness. After the evaluation, we concluded that all eight arguments voiced by politicians are not strong, based on their moral content and fact-based evidence against them. Regarding further implications of our thesis, it could be researched why politicians have these arguments and what factors could affect it. Besides, it would be beneficial to conduct comprehensive research on society?s stance about SSMCU legalization.