In order to formulate its answer, the Constitutional Court decided to ask the religious denominations, academy, parliament and civil society groups to discuss the issue of homosexuality.
All the churches which answered to the request condemned homosexuality, the Senate rejected the charges that the article is contrary to the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the academy announced that it will take time to analyse the issue, while the civil society asked for the ban to be removed.
Adrian Coman, then the executive director of Accept, the largest LGBT rights organisation in Romania, stated in an interview after the article was repealed that: "Thus has been eliminated a delicate subject that appeared on all international agendas regarding homosexuality.
From a legislative point of view, Romania has chosen to respect human dignity, putting an end to a culture of fear and humiliation that its citizens of homosexual or bisexual orientation were forced to live through.
The far-right Greater Romania Party (PRM), which was the largest opposition bloc in both chambers of parliament, opposed the modification of the Penal Code, arguing that the article was already too lenient and that it was damaging national pride.
[7] The party's Senator Aron Belascu stated that this "so-called harmonisation with European legislation was a fatal error"[4] while PRM parliamentarian Dumitru Balaiet argued that Romanians are an Eastern Orthodox people and could not accept homosexuality.
Its leader, Corneliu Coposu, argued that its Christian stance led it "to combat every deviation from the law of nature and from the moral principles of a future balanced society", while deputy Emil Popescu said that "incest was preferable to homosexuality since at least the former preserved the chance of procreation".