“You may like Alexis Tsipras. You may not. You may think that he’s a good politician or a bad one. That he has contributed to the country or not. You may have arguments to support all the above; you may not. But you’ll agree if I tell you that, at the moment, Alexis Tsipras is the Prime Minister o Greece”.
These are the first lines of this month’s editorial note of ‘Antivirus’ magazine, a free press publication addressed to the LGBT community of Athens. Alexis Tsipras graces the cover of the magazine, being the first Prime Minister in history to publicly be associated with gay rights. Giving an interview to the magazine, the PM argues that Greek society is more accepting today:
“[Gay couples] have passed from the shadows into the light and will never accept to return back again”, Mr Tsipras says, commenting on the bill passed in parliament, allowing the civil union of same sex partners. The Greek PM, argues that human rights are not a luxury in the times of the current economic crisis, talking about the government’s deliberations on the legal recognition of sexual identity (allowing for anyone to choose their sexual identity, without the need of prior medical procedure, as it is the case today), after the passing of the same sex civil partnership law.
“We didn’t feel that we owed to the LGBT community to pass these two laws,” says Alexis Tsipras.
“We owed it to ourselves, to our ideas and to our struggles for equality and justice.”