MOSCOW, August 2 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian court on Friday said a registry office’s refusal to register a gay couple as married was unlawful, but the court declined to order the registration to be made, the RAPSI legal news agency reported.
Last week, gay-rights activists Dmitry Chunosov and Yaroslav Yevtushenko asked the court in central Russia’s Lipetsk Region to overturn as illegal a refusal by the St. Petersburg office to register them as married.
The office had denied the registration on grounds that, according to Russia’s Family Code, marriage is a conjugal union between a man and a woman.
The activists asserted, however, that the Family Code does not mention same-sex couples.
The court on Friday ruled that the office should have accepted the marriage application regardless of whether there were any impediments to registration.
A similar complaint was lodged on Thursday by another same-sex couple in Moscow. On June 28, Yana Petrova and Yelena Davydova applied at the same St. Petersburg registry office but were denied on the same grounds.
