April 30, 2020
Tunisia Denies Recognizing Gay Couple's Marriage
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.
The Tunisian government denied having recognized the marriage of a Tunisian man to a male French citizen, declaring that such unions are "against the law" in the Muslim-majority North African country.
When Tunisia became independent of French rule in 1956, it failed to shrug off the colonial power's legal denial of marriage equality. It was to that antiquated penal code that Lotfi Zitoun, Tunisia's Minister of Local Affairs, pointed, saying, "French law does not allow recognition of same-sex marriage by Maghreb countries," reported UK newspaper the Daily Mail.
As reported at EDGE, the story of the two men having their marriage recognized after a wedding in France was posted online by Tunisian LGBTQ equality group Shams - Pour la d�p�nalisation de l'homosexualit� en Tunisie.
The group's post said that the Tunisian man's marriage information was added to his birth certificate - a common practice in Tunisia. That addition to the man's official documents constituted the governmental recognition Shams trumpeted.
Shams had already responded to denials issued by Zitoun, posting:
In response to the statements made by Minister Lotfi Zitoun, the association #Shams says:
1-Tunisian husband has no other nationality. He is not French-Tunisian and only became a resident in France after the marriage.
2-The 1958 judicial convention between Tunisia and France was suspended in 2016 by the French Court of Cassation in matters of mixed marriage. In addition, a Directive has been sent to the prosecutor not to oppose mixed gay marriage between French and Maghreb.
3-No legal action has been brought by Tunisian husband to delete the registration of gay marriage in his birth certificate.
Now Zitoun says that any apparent recognition of the marriage was "in error" and claims that the mistake has been fixed:
"There was a precedent, an error committed by the municipality of Tunis. And it has been rectified."
