Romania's Constitutional Court Upholds Proposed Traditional Marriage Amendment

Romania's Constitutional Court yesterday ruled unanimously that a proposal to amend Article 48 of the country's Constitution to preclude same-sex marriage is constitutional.  The Constitutional provision now reads: "The family is founded on the freely consented marriage of the spouses...."  According to Reuters, the proposed amendment would replace "the spouses" with "a man and a woman."  The petition proposing the amendment received 3 million signatures earlier this year.  The next steps will be for the amendment to be approved by Parliament and then submitted to a national referendum. The case has garnered international attention. The U.S. advocacy group Liberty Counsel submitted an amicus brief (full text) in support of the proposed amendment. Twenty-eight human rights groups, including Amnesty International, had urged the Court to reject the proposed amendment.