VILNIUS - Irena Degutiene, a member of the Homeland Union (Conservatives) will reportedly begin collecting signatures in January as part of a drive to amend the constitution so that same-sax marriages will be banned.
The news caused consternation among some MPs, who said the Lithuanian constitution already bans gay and lesbian marriages. Julius Sabatauskas, a Social Democrat and chairman of Parliament's legal committee, said such marriages were already unconstitutional in Lithuania.
"The Civil Code also gives a comprehensible definition of marriage with a person of the opposite sex. The Civil Code defines marriage as a voluntary agreement between a man and a woman to crease legal family relations between a woman and a man, as stipulated by law," he told the Baltic News Service in Thursday.
Latvia's Parliament passed a similar amendment to that nation's constitution in December.
