Legislating political space for LGBT families: The 2018 referendum on the definition of family in Romania

As marriage is defined in post‐socialist Romania as the union of two spouses and not specifically between a man and a woman, the legalisation of homosexuality in 2002 created the possibility for legal same‐sex marriage and for a more inclusive sexual citizenship. By 2018, a political alliance mobilised a referendum to redefine marriage in a way that would make families headed by same‐sex couples impossible. LGBT rights organisations and others who promote a more tolerant society urged Romanian citizens to boycott the vote. Eventually, due to a missing quorum the referendum was invalidated leaving the definition of marriage as it was – between two spouses. With a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyse the way that this referendum functioned as a test of the re‐definition of family within the post‐socialist Romanian political space. The failure of this legislation then leads to our central question – were Romanians acting to promote a more tolerant and inclusive definition of family or were they merely reacting against the politicians, religious, and other influential groups who initiated the referendum? First, discourse analysis presents the various sets of ideas employed by actors involved for and against the referendum. Then we conduct a spatial analysis to reveal the territorial articulations of obedience to vote (voter turn‐out) and the results of voting along with other demographic characteristics. Even though the majority of the population with the right to vote preferred to boycott the referendum, our research demonstrates the spatial articulation of attitudes towards LGBT families showing that in Romania there are five overlapping discourses: the tolerant, the politically conformant, the homophobic, the passive rural, and the homosexual.