Out in the World: LGBTQ news from Europe and Asia
MONACO Monaco’s top court struck down two lower court rulings that would have required the tiny Mediterranean principality to recognize foreign same-sex marriages, in a ruling that has not yet been published.
The case centered around a binational Monegasque-American same-sex couple who married in Grand Rapids, Mich., in August 2019 while residents in that state.
When they returned to Monaco the following year, the government refused to record them in the state register of marriages. “Although valid, this union cannot be transcribed in the marriage register in view of its manifest contrariety with Monegasque public order characterized by the constitutional principle according to which the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion is the state religion,” stated a letter from the Public Prosecutor’s Office in a letter to the Civil Registrar on the matter.
The letter goes on to invite the couple to instead form a cohabitation contract, which has been available to same-sex couples in Monaco as a form of civil union since 2020.
