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Wedding planner Dad on Lesbos: Finally a win for everyone
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Fate has already imposed many tests on Konstantinos Anagnostopoulos: The deputy mayor of the small Athens suburb of Nea Smyrni worries every day about a lack of staff for kindergartens and a school that lives in a temporary container.
The city's coffers have been empty for years.
But now Anagnostopoulos will make history.
He will be allowed to marry two men next week.
It is expected to be Greece's first same-sex marriage, the first ever in an Orthodox Christian country.
Just last week, Parliament voted to open marriage to everyone.
To the astonishment of many Greeks, the otherwise gnarly, conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis fought persistently for institutionalized love until the end, despite all criticism from the church and his own party.
In the end, a majority agreed, even the left-wing Syriza helped, and many opponents didn't even appear in parliament.
It was a “day of joy,” Mitsotakis declared afterwards to cheers.
Anagnostopoulos says that as a registrar he will do everything as usual; he has already discussed this with the two men.
The deputy mayor is a member of a local voters' association and does not belong to a party;
When asked, he says that he would probably classify himself as more on the progressive spectrum.
He sounds uncertain for a moment.
It seems important to him that the special wedding is not remembered as the end of a culture war, but as the beginning of something new.
The first wedding couple is well known locally
The two men who are now getting married have been residents of his community for a long time, he says on the phone, and have been a couple for over 20 years.
They looked after three children together.
"Both really want to show that gay couples can be completely normal and responsible."
If the law comes into force soon, says the deputy mayor, he can schedule the wedding straight away, a date during the week.
The ceremony itself usually lasts less than 20 minutes, and it will probably happen next Tuesday or Wednesday.
Anagnostopoulos does not believe that the reform will change Greece much - even now the young couples are already rather pragmatic.
Many brides come to the registry office with round bellies and then continue on to church.
»People are concerned with protecting one another, no matter how they love.«
Civil weddings do not have a long tradition in Greece; they were only introduced in the 1980s; before that there were only religious marriages.
Even today, the Greek Orthodox Church is at the top of the constitution as the state church; in hardly any other EU country do more people describe themselves as believers.
Changes also for families with queer parents
The 16-year-old son of LGBTQ activist Stella Belia recently told French AFP journalist Marina Rafenberg what legal equality for same-sex marriages means to him.
"So far," he said, his second, non-biological mother had been "like a ghost" to the authorities.
“If my biological mother died, she wouldn't be able to take care of me.
This law will change my life.«
Both women could now officially accept him and his twin brother as their children, and adoption will be open to all non-biological parents in the future.
However, other forms of family planning, such as surrogacy, remain prohibited.
It is a cautious reform.
On Lesbos, wedding planner Gabriela Vati is already looking forward to her first lesbian wedding.
She and her husband have been organizing lavish celebrations on the island since 2008. She says she has always thought that the place for female couples to get married should actually be "the holiest place of all."
»I admire their courage to assert themselves in such a world.
Marrying is also a human right.«
Then she talks about Sappho, the ancient poet who lived here as early as 500 BC and described the beauty of women so impressively that female homosexuality was called "Sapphic love" for a long time afterwards.
Dad briefly raves about the Aegean sun and says that she had already organized a ceremony for a same-sex couple without a marriage license in her town on the harbor.
She doesn't believe that equality will now ensure that Lesbos will suddenly return to the way it supposedly did 2,500 years ago.
"It's a very strict community, closely connected to the church," she says.
However, the wedding planner believes that marriage could be economically worthwhile for everyone.
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Female spectators in Parliament after same-sex marriage was passed last week
Photo: Angelos Tzortzinis / AFP
»A wedding on our island usually means a vacation for many guests from outside.
Couples spend four times more money on their honeymoon," she calculates, pointing out other advantages of wedding tourism: The visitors mostly collected positive memories and often shared particularly beautiful photos on social media.
"There are millions of homosexual people worldwide - it would be foolish to think that same-sex weddings would not benefit the Greek islands!"
Many of their guests are already from abroad, says Dad.
It is important to her that the celebrations do not harm the local people: disposable tableware is taboo, and she recommends throwing olive leaves instead of rice and confetti.
The leftover cake went to the village.
In fact, many Greeks appear to be open to marriage for everyone, even believers, despite months of opposition from the church.
Clergy recently gathered with believers in front of Parliament to pray away the reform at the last moment.
Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaia and Lavreotiki even declared gays and lesbians to be "miserable people" who were no longer helped since homosexuality was no longer considered an illness - which at some point was enough even for the Greek Psychiatrists' Association, which addressed itself with a single sentence The public said: “Homosexuality is not a mental illness.”
Perhaps it was precisely this circus that ultimately ensured the great unity that is otherwise rare in Greece.
Finally a reform that doesn't take anything away from anyone
Wedding planner Vati sees the decision as a kind of break for all Greeks who have had to go through a lot in recent years: debt crisis, Troika requirements, emigration, unemployment, migration debates, Corona.
Finally a reform that doesn't seriously hurt anyone.
She even speaks of proof of the humanism and sense of justice of Greek society.
Values that dad thinks he recognizes “from ancient times.”
Deputy Mayor Konstantinos Anagnostopoulos also believes that the first same-sex marriage in his country can only bring about good things.
“I’m already happy for the couple,” he says.
“And a little for me too.”
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