Recognition of same-sex unions in Lithuania

In 2011, the Constitutional Court of Lithuania ruled that the family does not derive exclusively from marriage, opening the possibility for partnerships or other forms of legal recognition to be introduced to same-sex couples.

"[9] The proposal, which was criticised by LGBT groups, explicitly stipulated that the cohabitants entering the agreement did not intend to create family relations.

On 14 February 2018, appearing at a demonstration in Vilnius, Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis called on the Seimas to pass a same-sex partnership law.

[13] Of the eight candidates running in the 2019 presidential election, five expressed support for registered partnerships, namely Vytenis Andriukaitis, Arvydas Juozaitis, Valentinas Mazuronis, Ingrida Šimonytė and winner Gitanas Nausėda.

[1] In December 2020, MP Tomas Vytautas Raskevičius from the Freedom Party said that the government would submit a civil partnership bill to Parliament in March 2021.

But on the other hand, there's nothing joyous that even such a restrained bill cannot pass without a big fight, with powerful homophobes hurling insults at citizens who want equal rights".

[20] President Gitanas Nausėda declined to take an official position on the bills, but in a September 2023 interview said that efforts to allow same-sex unions were "a sign of a civilized state".

[25][26] In June 2024, the Freedom Party announced it would block the government's candidate for European Commissioner until it agrees to pass the civil union bill.

Although the Social Democrats had campaigned on supporting civil unions, they announced they would boycott the final reading, meaning the bill would be unable to pass without their votes.

[29][30] In November, the Dawn of Nemunas party expressed its opposition to allowing the draft partnership bill to be part of the new coalition's governing programme.

Nevertheless, a drive to amend the Constitution of Lithuania to ban same-sex marriages was reportedly under way in December 2005 by a social conservative member of the Seimas who had started collecting signatures.

[33] Julius Sabatauskas, the chairman of the Parliament's Committee on Legal Affairs, however, denounced the plan as unnecessary as "the Constitution already bans same-sex marriage".

[37] On 28 July 2023, a court in Vilnius dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that Article 38 of the Constitution "is clear and specific, and does not give rise to any presumption that it can be interpreted as conferring the right to marry irrespective of the sex of the persons concerned".