Europe 1 with AFP 2:10 p.m., September 26, 2021
Invite to vote this Sunday on the question, the Swiss have said yes to same-sex marriage.
According to the most recent estimate, the "yes" would win with 64% of the vote, making Switzerland the 17th country to recognize marriage for all in Europe.
The new text also provides for the possibility for a same-sex couple to adopt.
Switzerland has joined the majority of Western European countries in launching a resounding yes to marriage for all in a referendum held on Sunday. According to the most recent quantified estimate of the polling institute gfs.bern, the yes won with 64% with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points. This result, still provisional but which can no longer be reversed, clearly exceeds the score announced by the polls before this election, which was opposed in particular by the populist party UDC, the country's leading party and certain religious groups. "It's a historic day." The formula was on everyone's lips at the headquarters of supporters of the yes, in a restaurant in Bern, decked out with rainbow flags, where some 200 to 250 people gathered.
The non camp had resumed its colors as the election approached by leading a campaign focused strongly on the well-being of the child, his development and the importance in his eyes of the couple made up of a father and a child. mother.
Shocking posters deplored the commodification of the child and affirmed that "marriage for all kills the father".
On one of them, you can see a crying baby, with an ear tag usually reserved for cattle, and this question: "Babies to order?".
Children in the heart of the countryside
On another, a huge zombie head, supposed to represent a deceased father, stares at passers-by. A primary school in Valais had even decided to cover it because it frightened children. Homosexual couples can already enter into a civil pact in Switzerland, and on Sunday the cantons which opposed it seemed for the most part to have voted in favor of homosexual union 16 years later. The new text provides in particular that same-sex couples can adopt a child jointly.
In addition, female couples will be able to use sperm donation.
It was one of the most controversial points and put forward by opponents.
Benjamin Roduit, national adviser (deputy), of the Center party, stressed on the public channel RTS that for him marriage for all between consenting adults is not a problem.
He said he was afraid, on the other hand, of the doors that he believed was opened up by access to sperm donation for lesbian couples.
"The success of our campaign may have been to have thematized the child in the MAP (medically assisted procreation)", he declared.
The "Robin Hood" initiative rejected
According to estimates by the gfs.bern institute, voters largely rejected a second proposal submitted to them, launched by young people from the Socialist Party, which has the slogan "Money does not work, you do!". It was quickly nicknamed the "Robin Hood" initiative and obtained 34% positive responses. The initiative called for income from capital - interest, dividends, for example - to be taxed 1.5 times more than income from labor.
An exemption from this tax to the tune of, for example, 100,000 francs per year is foreseen but the additional tax revenues would be used to reduce the taxation of low and middle incomes or to finance social benefits such as crèches, subsidies to the child. health insurance or training, emphasizes the site of supporters of this proposal.
The polls already gave the losing initiative.