A word to the columnist In Lithuania, non-traditional family unions are enforced through fines The constitution still says that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Three-quarters of the country's population are Catholic, so the bishops oppose comparing same-sex unions to a family. But the Constitutional Court opened another way - registration of so-called partnerships. The Ministry of Justice pushes back and says a separate law is needed. But the local courts think otherwise, and local human rights defenders also joined the pressure and demanded a fine for refusing to register same-sex partnerships. Who in this story has the right to determine what a family is: society, parliament or the court? How does public opinion once again become a victim of politics? Our columnist Andrey Razumov analyzes how in Lithuania the boundaries of the traditional family are changed through the legal door of "partnership". Read the column "But no, so pay! ".