The Romanian “Family Referendum” and the New Social Conservatism: Uncivil Society and Feeble Party Systems

This text was first published in Serbo-Croatian by Bilten.

On the 25^th-28^th of May, and with the official support of the Hungarian government, Budapest was the place to be for all those keen on defending “the traditional family”. Called the “Budapest Family Summit,” the event occasioning this huge congregation of patriarchy enthusiasts, was a massive gathering. It featured an impressive array of right-wing organizations tied together by a rather explicit anti-abortion, anti-gay rights rhetoric, along with their commitment to the patriarchal family and Christian faith. Among them one could find the Croatian U Ime Obitelji, the unavoidable US evangelical organizations, the Serbian Dveri Party, the Italian Lega Nord, the French La Manif pour Tous, along with representatives from every continent. The summit was also proud to host the annual meeting of the World Congress of Families (WCF), a US-based coalition of NGOs, comprising some of the most influential organizations of the Christian right. Along with the enthused support of the Hungarian Fidesz, it was the WCF that represented the organizational backbone behind this global network of social conservatives.

Within this cosy right-wing environment, a Romanian participant, Bogdan Stanciu, founder of an anti-abortion NGO, could boast significant advances: “Romania is at the forefront of the battle for family and for preservation of the European civilization model, grounded on the marital union and on strong and independent families.” Stanciu’s boastful statement was a reference to the Romanian Parliament’s approval of a referendum campaign which would constitutionally define marriage as solely the union between a man and a woman. A “civilizational model” already present in the Civil Code, but whose inclusion in the Constitution would explicitly rule out the possibility of same-sex marriages for years to come. Gathering an impressive three million signatures, the initiative was organized by The Coalition for Family (Coaliția pentru Familie-CPF) and, now that the Parliament has given its consent, a referendum is due in the upcoming months.

It is not easy to spell out the muddled history of both the CPF or of its initiative. The Coalition is made out of a few dozens of organizations, most of them of religious tinge, but ample enough to include something like “The Association of Clever Parents”. In a way it is the alter-ego of the civil society of the liberal 1990s: a grass-roots organization which is active, capable of pressuring state institutions, and generously right-wing. Its first public appearance was in 2013 when it expressed its objections to a civil union initiative proposed by the lone-wolf MP Remus Cernea. In the last few years, the latter has recurrently tried to push forward a legal framework for recognizing civil partnerships, only to repeatedly find his initiatives prematurely slayed in the first stages of the legislative process. Long before its seemingly inevitable legal demise, his 2013 attempt triggered a rather successful reaction from right-wing Christian groups gathered under the Coalition for Family umbrella. That year proved pivotal also for another reason, however. The success of a similar enterprise, launched by the Croatian U Ime Obitelji, had provided a winning strategy and a rather illustrious model of efficacious mobilization. Moreover, a year earlier the Hungarian Fidesz government had managed to include in their constitution a similar restrictive definition of family. Both U Ime Obitelji and Fidesz had successfully defended their cause in front of the Venice Commission. Consequently, 2013 showed that strictly within a liberal legal framework, such initiatives could hardly be staved off without a larger pro-LGBT social pressure.

These successes also added a new page in the history of awkward alliances between the US religious right and local conservatives in Eastern Europe: the World Congress Family, along with its numerous member-organizations, played a significant role in this rapprochement, but also NGOs like the Liberty Counsel or the ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom) which have provided legal expertise in the tiresome legal battles for the „natural family” or „religious rights”. WCF had drawn on its extensive Russian experience where it has been involved since the 1990s, actively supporting the anti-gay legislation introduced there. Anatoly Antonov, who had put its mark on the Russian family legislation ever since the 1990s, is one of the co-founders of the congress. In Romania, it was the ADF that took centre stage, providing some of the legal expertise necessary for the constitutional referendum. Its presence was visible already during the 2011 drafting of the Civil Code when it had lobbied for the current definition of marriage as solely a heterosexual affair.

Remapping the political space

From the outside the entire process initiated out by the CPF might seem awkwardly futile, violently pushing against an open door. After all, just like in the 2013 Croatian case, the Romanian Civil Code already explicitly forbids same-sex marriages. The awkward references to an “LGBT pressure,” presumably wresting out of the Romanian legislation the right to marriage, can hardly be corroborated by facts. The LGBT community has barely managed to catch some breath in the last 15 years, let alone exert any significant pressure on state institutions. Apart from violent everyday discrimination, up until 2001 “homosexuality” was still a criminal offence and the last remnants of anti-gay legislation were scrapped only as part of the EU accession package. Since 2013 each and every one of the initiatives for civil union had died, however heroically, on the hallways of the Romanian Parliament. None of them ever reached the voting stage of the two Houses of Representatives. In this context, when even civil union is off the table, gay marriage is unfortunately well beyond the horizon and hardly an impending prospect. Moreover, unlike in the Croatian case there hardly seems to be political will to improve the conditions of the LGBT community. After the 2013 Croatian referendum, various political parties supported the idea of a “legislative barter,” by introducing a civil union legislation to offset the constitutional change. A similar scenario, accepting civil unions after the referendum, is highly unlikely in the Romanian case. For what they are worth, most major parties explicitly expressed their support for the Coalition’s aims.

With an enemy that it greatly outweighs in political leverage, the Coalition appears to be crying wolf in the safest, most conservative fold possible. No wonder then that even sympathetic critics have often accused it of addressing a “non-issue,” fighting against ideological windmills. And yet the political ripples of this strange campaign have quickly become powerful waves. The referendum proposal has managed to polarize the public sphere with direct political consequences. The only party whose members decided to take a stand against the referendum, the anti-corruption USR, found itself in the middle of an internal sea-storm. The newly-founded organization was ideologically split: after the party voted to oppose the referendum, the founder and leader Nicușor Dan decided to resign. According to him, the party’s anti-referendum stance would chase away the social conservatives from the common fight against corruption. The best decision was to refrain from any decision, focusing on the seemingly neuter terrain of the anti-corruption battle. The referendum’s upshots are more wide-reaching than this, unfortunately. It has become a battle for the hegemony of the public sphere, over the manner in which the political space is mapped out and political stakes created. The referendum has provided an opportunity for social conservatives to organize and show their mobilization skills, effectively pressuring both the public sphere and state institutions to react. The campaign has been a political school for the Christian right, a training camp for honing and refining their political strategies.

In this way CPF has successfully managed to popularize a marginal social conservative agenda and impose it within the public sphere. It has done so by picking on some of the most exposed citizens in Romania: up to this day the political leverage of the LGBT community is incredibly frail. The possible success of the referendum would mark a symbolic victory over a community which is still reeling after decades of criminalization. And yet there is more than symbolic victories here: the Coalition has managed to efficiently remap the social and political space in Romania, as well as the stakes of social conflict. Regardless of whether the referendum will fail or not, the terms of the “family debate” are those imposed by the Christian conservatives: as a fight between the forces of tradition and EU-backed modernizers, between those who defend the “natural family” and “Brussels-supported, Soros-financed” NGOs. Participants in the debate are unwarily forced into one of the camps, forced to pick sides, but unable to choose the terrain. The success of such a strategy is visible in Hungary or Poland where the political space has been defined in similar terms: as a fight between the ugly forces of globalization and the white cavaliers of tradition and “Christian Europe”, be they Orbán or Kaczyński. Meanwhile LGBT persons are unwittingly compelled to become the front-images of this presumably enforced globalization, bearing the brunt of the social violence unleashed against it.

The East European Party Systems and the Allure of Social Conservatism

The dangers of this ideological remapping are significant partly because of the strange structure of the Eastern European party systems. After 1989, the political parties of the region have rarely tried to develop formal connections with their constituencies through intermediary associations such as trade unions, civic organizations or various caucuses. The ties between the party system and the electorate are incredibly weak. The few ones that managed to create some links with the voters, gaining their commitment, have done so through informal and dangerously unstable patronage networks. Romania’s most powerful player, the Social-Democratic Party, is still trying to cope with internal crises that have sprung exactly from these patronage networks and the personal allegiance they commanded.

The results of this loose institutionalization are visible in the amazingly low turnouts which have characterized almost every election since 1989, as well as the lack of traditional party-allegiance. It is a fuzzy party system, with no clear ideological identities and no intermediary institutions that might ensure stable voting patterns. More often than not capturing the electorate becomes a confused scramble for the votes of a volatile constituency. Furthermore, the financial crisis has led to unstable political alliances, with some of the existing parties of the region loudly caving-in or badly shaken-up, while new experimental political formations (Momentum in Hungary, USR in Romania, Modern in Poland) are vying for votes. In this context, the political leverage of conservative organizations such as CPF, boasting three million supporters, can be significant. In a way, the CPF ensures what Romanian parties have always lacked: a more stable grounding in civil society as well as an ideological profile. While staying clear of any political commitments and boasting its autonomy, the Coalition provides an opportunity to renew the ties between political actors and their voters, to ensure a stable constituency. Moreover, it provides a ready-made political vocabulary, of strong ideological allure: a certain neo-con intransigence with Christian flourishes that Romanian politicians dote on. This offers a specific social and ideological depth to what are otherwise free-floating political actors: Romanian politicians whose sole connection with the electorate in the last years have been shaky patronage networks.

But it is not just the direct votes that matter. As it has showed in the last year, CPF can influence how public discourse is shaped and organized, it can create and recreate political stakes out of thin air, it can incense political passions. By recovering out of the dungeons of the Internet the fascist opposition between faceless, EU/Soros-backed globalizers and the defenders of profound localism, the Coalition has set up a way of defining political identities which is here to stay. Just like in Macedonia or Hungary, accusations of “Sorosism” are constantly being hurled at each other in the media or on social networks. This is an impressive power, which makes the political sphere unusually receptive to social agendas such as those proposed by the Coalition.

Since the Coalition’s aims are much bigger than the referendum: it includes a campaign against sexual educations, a strict anti-abortion stance, but also diverse social and measures for protecting “the natural family.” This program is telling of the political effects of the economic crisis on the Eastern European right. It is something visible especially in Hungary or Poland, but also in Slovakia and now Romania. On the one hand, the recession made the conservative right sensitive to certain welfare and redistributive measures, in contrast with a strict neoliberal stance. After all, PiS won the elections in Poland by promising a generous family allowance to boost the nation’s birth rate, while Fidesz has made the same birth rate a top national priority. On the other hand, however, the right’s vision of redistribution and welfare is limited to a handful of measures that come with a larger ideological package. It is a package rife with apocalyptic tropes of demographic decline, a strong emphasis on patriarchal structures and violent pro-natalism. Added to the mix and justified by the same demographic fears, there is an anti-immigration stance verging on xenophobia. Whatever small redistributive measure the conservative right might propose, they are undergirded by a vision of welfare as a nationalist, patriarchal project, more of a demographic instrument than a social justice mechanism. The state’s redistributive function is aimed solely defending the “demographic wealth” of the nation against migrants and the enemies of the “the natural family.” These perceived enemies might be LGBT people, trying to cling to their hardly-won rights, or women simply wishing to have control over their bodies. It goes without saying that our hearts and minds should be with them.