To the Editor of the Morning Star,

We are writing to express our deep dissatisfaction with the following unacceptable article published in your newspaper, http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e8bb-Greece-MPs-vote-to-legalise-same-sex-unions#.Vn-DWfmLRdi, in relation to the discussion in the Greek Parliament on the Civil Partnership of homosexual couples.

This article makes the following reference that completely distorts reality “Communist Party of Greece MPs joined the far-right Golden Dawn party in unanimously opposing same-sex partnerships” and does not make any effort to inform the readers about the positions of the KKE on this issue.

We would like to clarify this matter and stress that the KKE had a clear position in the discussion based on well-substantiated arguments that can not be distorted. What is even more unacceptable for a newspaper with such a long and proud history is that the writer of the article lumps the KKE together with criminal Nazi Golden Dawn and its despicable fascist views.

We inform you and your readers that the KKE during the discussion in Parliament on this issue responded to bourgeois forces like PASOK, SYRIZA and ND that attempted set up fake demarcation lines between conservatism and progressivism according to what position each party took on this specific draft legislation. The KKE voted against this draft law with a specific reasoning, on the basis of its own standpoint, which cannot be lumped together with that of any other political force.

In particular, it noted that the SYRIZA-ANEL government on the one hand is implementing a barbaric anti-people political line and on the other is trying to hide behind pieces of legislation that not only are not a counterweight to the anti-people measures and do not provide the slightest relief, but actually pave the way for a number of dangerous measures.  The essence is that on the one hand the government is smashing whatever rights have been left standing and on the other is hypocritically presenting itself as the champion of various individual rights and claims. However, the government is in reality serving other goals. The KKE stressed that these people the government claims to defend will not be exempted from the offensive unleashed by the same government against the workers’-people’s rights as a whole, but on the contrary will suffer the consequences along with the rest.

The KKE castigated this hypocrisy on the part of the government, noting that it is trying to legislate, for example, through the Civil Partnership the widow’s pension or the ability for someone to insure their partner so that they can have medical cover, when the right to medical cover should be universal, regardless of whether someone has social insurance. It noted that there are still women today who remain in violent relationships in order to maintain their right to medical cover.

Highlighting a number of existing issues, such as inheritance or someone’s right to be informed about another person’s health, the KKE noted that these can and should be dealt with as whole in the framework of private legal agreements and changes that could be made to the civil code. Indeed, it stressed that a number of these issues are not only of concern to homosexuals. For example, every individual should have the right to determine the person they wish as their proxy to be kept informed about the course of their health, if they do not want their relatives to have a say in this matter. However the goal of this legislation is the institutional recognition of a homosexual couple as a family, including the right in the future for these couples to acquire children. This is where our party’s basic disagreement is to be found.

Because the expression of sexuality is a private affair for the individual, while the family is a social relationship and the basic institution for the welfare of children.

Of course we do not stigmatize people who choose a specific sexual orientation. We take a stance against all those who insult or behave unacceptably towards these people- behaviour that SYRIZA’s partners in government have been culpable of. In addition, we have always voted for articles of legislation that aim to punish such behaviour in a stricter way. However, we consider that the homosexual sexual orientation or partnership on its own does not give rise to social rights related to the family, and chiefly, to the custody of children. We are referring to rights and obligations that emerge in the framework of the family i.e. birth, welfare, and raising of children, who biologically are the result of the relationship between a man and a woman.

For us it is a fact that the family, in the conditions of a class society and possibly of any society, is formed as a unit for the reproduction of society and the specific system, together with the workplace of course (because the main part of reproduction occurs via labour). As a communist party we consider that the family in Greece and in every class society, both historically and today-despite the fact that family law has improved and must be further improved- is based on economic, social and cultural coercion. There is no form of partnership in class society that is not based on this coercion. We struggle to change some laws, to overturn them, to correct them, to improve them, but unfortunately this does not negate the character of the existing family, which is governed by coercion and economic interests.

We struggle so that at some point we will have a socialist, communist society, where there will be parental-father-mother relations, but without coercion or the need for formal recognition. And this will be the case when conditions exist which mean that one does not need to resolve issues of inheritance, insurance and accommodation via legal arrangements. Then the family will truly be a relationship of mutual love, freed from every form of coercion.

Based on the above, in order to clarify the matter and inform your readers correctly, we please ask you to publish our letter.

Elisseos Vagenas

Member of the CC

Responsible for the International Relations Section

05.01.2016