Avenue de l'Europe
Vallianatos and others v. Greece 
| 2013
Dedicated to the reverential eyes of all couples in love, this decision of the ECHR profoundly changed the perception of same-sex couple love from mere sex to family love.
Grigoris Vallianatos - Photo: Grigoris Vallianatos (private collection)
Grigoris Vallianatos and his partner Nikolaos believed that Greece’s law on civil partnerships was discriminatory because it excluded same-sex couples.
The 2008 law allowed for a form of official union, other than marriage, but only for different-sex couples.
Grigoris and Nikolaos – along with several other same-sex couples – decided to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights challenging the Greek government’s policy.
The European court found that Greece had failed to show why it was necessary to prevent same-sex couples from entering civil partnerships. It ruled that Greece had discriminated against Grigoris and Nikolaos and the other couples.
In response to the European court’s judgment in Grigoris and Nikolaos’s case, the Greek Government passed a new law in 2015 that gave same-sex couples the right to enter civil partnerships.
A Turkish court decided that Y.Y., a transgender man, was not allowed to have gender reassignment surgery because he was not infertile. The European court said this requirement was unnecessary. It found that Turkey had breached Y.Y.’s rights by denying him the chance to have surgery for many years. In response, Turkey removed the infertility requirement for gender reassignment surgery.
Since the age of 14, Jeffrey Dudgeon experienced fear and psychological distress because his sexuality was seen as a crime. His house was raided by police, and he was interrogated for hours. In a test case, the European court ruled that the law violated the right to private life. In 1982, Northern Ireland legalised gay relationships – followed by many other European countries.
Greece
Türkiye
United Kingdom