What's life like for LGBTQ people in Lithuania?
Let’s take a look at some of the key equality indicators.
What’s life like for LGBTQ people in Lithuania? Let’s take a look at some of the key equality indicators.
Is homosexuality legal in Lithuania?
Yes. Same-sex sexual activity was decriminalised in 1993.
Are there anti-discrimination protections in place for LGBTQ people in Lithuania?
Yes. Anti-discrimination protections were enacted in 2010.
Is there Marriage Equality in Lithuania?
It's a complicated situation.
Lithuania's constitution explicitly limits marriage to opposite sex couples. Additionally, the country's civil code does not allow for same-sex couples to register their partnerships.
However, Lithuania's constitutional court has ruled that the ban on registering same-sex relationships is unconstitutional and we now have examples of lower courts approving the applications of same-sex couples seeking to register their partnerships for legal protection.
It's not clear how this will play out but it's likely that there will be increasing pressure for some sort of legislative resolution to clarify the legal position.
What’s life like for LGBTQ people in Lithuania?
Lithuania is a socially conservative country.
Homophobia is systemic.
There is a small LGBTQ community in Vilnius.
In the recent ILGA report on LGBTQ Equality, Lithuania was ranked 37th out of all the countries in Europe. The analysis scored Lithuania highly on the criteria of Civil Society Space, but weakly on all other measures - scoring a total of 24.09%.
