I had a very intersting day today. It was my fist session of legal assistance. There is a legal council in our university with master students, and we treat some cases submited by anyone from the university or from outside. The aim is to give a first legal opinion on any matter submited to us. It's very useful both for us and the people, for us because it provide us some real cases to treat, and for them because they can get some advice for free.
The first case today was very complicated, but so interesting! I can't say the details because we are subjected to confidentiality, but it was about gay rights in Switerland. I will just write some important points about the state of gay unions in Switzerland, wich could be interesting for some of you.
Switzerland has adopted a law allowing same sex unions with basically the same rights as marriage. Gay couples are treated almost equally compared to married people. The big remaining difference is that the gay couples are denied the right to adopt children. The gay unions are officially called "registered partnership" (how poetic...). Basically, this goes in the right direction, as the gays and lesbians have now the right to commit in a civil partnership according most of the rights accorded to married people.
There has been a lot of political efforts to bring birth to this law. Some states in Switzerland (wich is, as the USA, a federal country, with 26 states) are catholic, and very conservative politically speaking, and some others are very "open" and liberal, mostly the states where the biggest cities are located. All the laws voted by the parliement can be submitted to the people for a referendum, and can therefore be refused. The problem for the parliement was to edict a law that could be accepted by the people, and a compromise had to be made between the different political sensibilities. Allowing marriage to gay couple was out of option. Doing so seemed impossible, as the people, in the case of a referendum, would for sure have refused it, because it was going to far. But the necessity to allow rights to homosexual couples was obvious. This compromise was finally found, and submitted to the swiss people, wich accepted it with a "yes" rate of about 58% (if I remember well).
It is a good thing I think, because we avoided the debate about marriage, with all the traps linked to it, the conflicts with the traditionnal and religious conceptions.
The law is good, but there are a few bad points. Appart from the problem of child adoption, a big problem comes from the designation of the official civil status. Married people are "married" on the official papers, while, logically, gay couples are listed as "linked by a registered partnership".
Here lies one of the problem that we treated tonight: when you want to be hired, and go to a job interview, the future employer has the right to ask questions about your civil status, as it can be important for him because he may have to know it (in order to establish the official documents for the social insurrances for instance). Therefore, you have basically no choice but to make your coming out to your employer if you are linked by a registered partnership, whereas you wouldn't have to do it if you weren't officialy together, because the sexual orientation is considered to be part of the very private life. This is, according to me, beyond reasonnable, it is a discrimination against gay people. It can lead to a disadvantage, knowing that homosexuality is far to be accepted by everyone.
Any discrimination based on the sexual orientation is forbidden by our constitution, and it would be easy to point it out in front of a constitutionnal court, but the problem is that, in Switzerland, believe it or not, there is no constitutionnal court! The respect of the constitution is verified by the parliament when he does the laws. The constitutionnality of the federal laws cannot be examined by any court!
In our case, it means that the discrimination generated by this law (wich otherwise is a very good inovation), although not compatible with our constitution, cannot be eliminated by any other way than a political action, and a modification of the different laws involved, and there is no political intention of doing so.
So, tonight, we, little students, decided to search for a legal way to make that change. I'm full of enthusiasm for this first case (especially because I could also be concerned in a few years), but I know that the chances are not far from zero. There are however other important questions in this case, wich could be easier to answer.
