CHRISTIAN Democrats (KDH) and left wing Slovak Democratic Alternative (SDA) party members exchanged cross words in parliament over an SDA-proposed anti-discrimination bill which the KDH claims is the first step towards allowing homosexual couples to adopt children, a move the conservatives strongly disagree with.
The SDA, in keeping with a recent European Parliament resolution, argues that the law is needed to ban any form of discrimination against people or companies based on race, language, age, religion, health, sex and political or sexual orientation.
Although agreeing that preventing discrimination was a good idea, KDH deputy chair Vladimír Palko said it was a "myth" that passage of the law was required by the European Union. He added that the draft's most "confusing expression" for him was the term "sexual orientation, which doesn't belong to politics but rather to the private sphere".
24. Jun 2002 at 0:00 | From press reports of TASR and SITA