Over 60% of Slovenians voted against legalising same-sex marriage

Just 35.65% of registered voters turned out to vote on whether the country should approve legislation -already passed in parliament- that would have given gay couples the right to marry and adopt.

So far 96% of ballots have been counted and 370,000 (63.21%) have voted down the proposal.

In order for the result to be valid, the winning side must have the support of at least 20% of the country’s over 1.7 million registered voters. That means the vote has been lost.

Opponents appeared to particularly disapprove of the legislation that gives gay couples the right to adopt.

Last week Pope Francis urged voters to vote ‘no’ and called on the country to “back the family as the structural reference point for the life of society”.

Parliament’s approval of the bill last March had made Slovenia Europe’s first former communist state to offer same-sex couples the right to marry. The parliamentary legislation had redefined marriage as a “union of two” instead of a “union of a man and a woman”.

Following Sunday’s vote, Slovenia’s family code will revert to limiting marriage to male and female couples.

Both the country’s president and the prime minister had backed a ‘yes’ vote.