Embattled Slovak Premier Shifts Focus to Gender in Culture Wars
(Bloomberg) -- Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Monday that he wants to amend the country’s constitution so that it recognizes just two genders, despite growing anger over his populist, pro-Russian policies.
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Fico said that he also wants to allow for people to change their gender only for serious reasons and limit adoption to heterosexual couples.
Speaking to reporters in the capital Bratislava, the premier said that schools would be required to teach in accordance with the constitution and that, if they chose not to, then parental consent would be required.
Fico returned to the helm of the small east European country in 2023 on a platform that pushed back against what he said were progressive ideologies spreading “like a cancer.” His rhetoric echoed that of his Hungarian ally Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is leading culture wars in the region against minorities.
“Progressivism is associated with nonsense, like someone waking up and saying they’re no longer a man or a woman, but a helicopter or a table lamp,” Fico told reporters. “It’s time to say what’s right in the constitution, to put an end to this nonsense.”
Fico championed a constitutional amendment during his previous administration, back in 2014, that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
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In order to secure enough votes to get this latest plan through parliament, Fico would need all of his allies as well as some opposition lawmakers onboard.
Crowds gathered in 20 cities, including Bratislava, on Friday against Fico’s shift toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in one of the country’s biggest protests since the fall of communism.
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