Greece’s police on Monday said it had sent anti-racism officers to guard the country’s first same-sex wedding between men, held under a landmark new law.
The police released a letter from the two men, who said they had received “threats to their safety” and thanked the officers for their assistance “during and after the ceremony” at the weekend.
“Our marriage, held in the presence of our three underage children, was free of fear and stress, as it should be,” the letter said, according to a police statement on X, formerly Twitter.
In 2008, the country’s first same-sex civil marriages involving a male and a female couple had taken place on the small Aegean island of Tilos.
They were later annulled in court.
In February, the Greek parliament legalised same-sex marriage and adoption over the opposition of many conservative ruling party lawmakers and despite objections from the influential Orthodox Church of Greece.
The bill was personally championed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who called it a “milestone” for human rights in the country.
Some 4,000 people had demonstrated against the reform outside parliament a few days before the vote, many of them brandishing religious icons and crucifixes.
The head of the main Greek opposition party Syriza, Stefanos Kasselakis, another key proponent of the reform, has announced plans to marry his American partner Tyler McBeth in Greece in the summer.
The couple previously tied the knot in the United States in October.
Greece had been condemned for anti-gay discrimination by the European Court of Human Rights in 2013, after gay couples were excluded from a 2008 civil union law.
Source: AFP