The LGBT rights organisation Zagreb Pride said on Tuesday that the new foster care bill proposed by the government is not in accordance with Croatia's law on life partnerships which guarantees equal rights to married and common law couples, warning that passing this bill could expose Croatia to civil lawsuits.

Zagreb Pride said that the new foster care bill, which does not allow same-sex couples to legally become foster parents, violates the law on life partnerships, which puts common law spouses and their children on an equal footing with married couples.

“We see this bill as yet another attempt of discrimination and violence against our families, carried out by the right-wing clerical lobby, which we will not allow,” Zagreb Pride said, adding that the European Court of Human Rights in 2016 found Croatia guilty of discrimination of same sex couples.

Junior coalition partner clashes with Prime Minister over foster care bill

Earlier on Tuesday, MP Milorad Batinic of the liberal Croatian People’s Party (HNS), a junior partner in the ruling coalition led by the conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), said that the HNS would not support the new foster care bill and abstain from voting for it in Parliament unless their amendment allowing same-sex partners to become foster parents is accepted.

“When the bill was put into procedure and during the public consultation, we made our stance known. However, the Minister for Family, Nada Murganic (HDZ), did not acknowledge that. We are now using what is a democratic procedure, and if our amendment is not upheld, we won’t support the bill,” he said.

Last week, the bill was taken off the parliament committee’s agenda due to opposition from HNS in the way foster family is defined in the bill which does not explicitly mention life partnership as a family union that meets conditions to provide foster care.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic responded in Parliament on Tuesday that he wouldn’t accept the HNS amendment allowing same-sex partners in formal and informal life partnerships to qualify for foster parenting.

“The government clearly sticks to the bill that has been put to a second reading in Parliament. That bill was prepared well, and all its provisions were analysed. We consider that the bill is appropriate in its current form, and that it offers a quality framework to improve the entire concept of foster care in Croatia… Every political party has its principles and values, including the HDZ, and with issues of this nature, it has a very clear and principled stance,” he said.

He added he did not believe that the bill violated Article 14 of the Constitution which says that everyone must be equal before the law.

Same-sex foster parenting ‘not in children’s best interest’

The influential ultra-conservative group U Ime Obitelji (“In the Name of the Family”) issued a press release on Monday saying same-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt or foster children, as that “would not be in children’s best interests”.

They went on to say that this was an attempt by LGBT and special interest lobbies to “pave the way for same-sex couples to provide foster care and adopt children, which is contrary to children’s interests, Croatia’s Constitution, and the will of Croatian citizens, clearly expressed five years ago at the national referendum on marriage.”

The group came to prominence in 2013 when it successfully organised a nationwide petition supported by the Catholic Church to call a referendum on raising the bar for same-sex marriages by adding a sentence defining marriage as exclusively a union between a man and a woman into the country’s Constitution.

They added that the best interest of every child is to grow up with a biological father and mother, and if that isn’t possible, then in a relationship that is the closest to the situation “in which a child comes into the world,” citing American and Canadian researchers who concluded that children in same-sex families experience more emotional problems compared to children whose parents are of different sexes, with less of a chance of finishing secondary school, ending up poorer, more prone to smoking, and to crime.

They also said that the research cited by LGBT activists to show that there are no differences between children raised by a man and a woman and those raised by same-sex couples is “mostly conducted on small groups of activists and well-to-do American homosexuals, which means that those results are not statistically relevant and representative.”

‘LGBT persons are no less capable for foster care’

Also on Tuesday, more than 200 Croatian psychologists, social workers, and educators sent an open letter to the media in which they debunked claims that there is any scientific value in claims that children raised by same-sex partners are in any way worse off than those growing up in traditional family units.

“In spite of the commonly heard prejudices, the comprehensive research done over many years on this issue has failed to prove that LGBT persons – whether as parents, foster parents, or adopters – are any less capable for parenting compared to heterosexuals, or that this would in any way damage children’s psycho-social development compared to children of heterosexual parents,” the letter said.

The signatories of the letter called on the government and Parliament to work in the best interests of children and draft laws which would take into account empirical scientific data, in order to help parent-less children get foster parents, regardless of the parents’ sex or sexual orientation.

According to a recently published report, there are currently about 3,000 children in the country waiting for adoption, with only 1,300 registered potential adopters. Moreover, the complicated rules and red tape keep the number of adoptions at modest levels, with only 126 successful adoptions in Croatia in 2017. This creates a severe lack of foster families in the country, which the new bill is trying to address.

“On the contrary, research data gathered has consistently shown that the quality and efficiency of parenting is not related to the parents’ sexual orientation. In other words, children living with two parents of the same sex are no different than children living with two parents of different sexes, in terms of a wide gamut of outcomes essential for the children’s welfare, including success at school, cognitive development, social skills, and mental health. LGBT persons can provide appropriate support, warmth, and healthy environment for their children just as well as heterosexual persons,” the letter added.

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