Date: Sat, 25 Mar 1995 10:08:55 -0500
From: fx049@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Ales Pecnik)

this is a report on a broadcast on the Slovene national TV's (TVS)
Tednik ("Weekly") on March 23th 1995.

Slovene lesbians and gays are now trying for the second time to
"legalize" same-sex marriages. The first attempt was in March 1993, when
two gays tried with an initiative to the Constitutional Court, but later
withdrew it because of Government's negative opinion (the whole story is
in Euro-Queer digest v1.i33; you can retrieve it by sending a message
with "get euro-queer-digest v1.i33" in the body of the message to
majordomo@queernet.org).

In TVS's broadcast "Tednik" there was an interview with Sandi Perdih. He
is one of those who started the first initiative. Apparently they
started another initiative to the parliament to change the marital law.
So far 155 persons have signed the petition to the parliament.

The initiative to allow same-sex marriages is co-sponsored by
Government's Bureau for Women's Politics. Vera Kozmik, the head of the
bureau, said it was reasonable to expect the law to be changed within
two years.

In the same show there was also a lady from Pedagogical Institute in
Ljubljana, saying that this law should wait for a little longer, because
only one or two couples would marry and we have *so many problems* and
*so many other and more important things to do*. Has anyone ever counted
all those things that are more important than human rights and equality?

The interview with Perdih was held on Zale, Ljubljana's biggest
graveyard. Mr. Perdih said he chose this place as a sign of respect to
all those who - because of society's intolerance towards homosexuality -
chose suicide as the final solution to their "problem".

According to a poll, 57% of people here oppose same-sex marriages
whereas 29% believe same-sex partners should be allowed to marry. The
public opinion now is very similar to the public opinion several years
ago on out-of-marriage partnership (is common law partnership the right
term?).

This also gave me the opportunity to hear our "family opinion". My
grandmother says it's foolish, my mom says all people should have equal
rights, including the right to marry and my brother says that Hitler
did a lousy job because he didn't kill all the fags.

This will definately postpone my coming out for some time.

Many regards from Slovenia,

Ales