This chapter offers an elaborate analysis of the position of same-sex couples and rainbow families under the ECHR and EU law. Addressing issues such as marriage and partnerships, parenthood and parental responsibility, but also social benefits, family reunification and the legal recognition of family ties established abroad, the chapter takes the view that the recognition and protection of family relationships can follow multiple paths and that the ECtHR case law and EU law are mutually reinforcing for the benefit of the rights of same-sex couples and their children. The chapter also acknowledges that subsidiarity considerations lead European bodies to favour a compromise approach, refraining from forcing states to abandon their traditional conception of family law’s fundamental institutions: marriage and parenthood. The chapter, nevertheless, suggests that, at some point in the future, the increased visibility and legitimacy of same-sex couples and rainbow families should ultimately lead to imposing a European and inclusive understanding of these institutions.

This chapter offers an elaborate analysis of three recent cases by the Court of Justice of the EU in the context of EU free movement law. The cases deal with the questions of whether and to what extent the EU Member States are obliged to accept a family status created abroad even when it is incompatible with their own family law (such as same-sex marriage and same-sex parenthood) or is a status totally unknown in their legal system (such as the Islamic kafala). The chapter argues that the main approach chosen by the Court regarding same-sex marriage and same-sex parenthood created abroad, obliging the Member States to recognise them for the purpose of free movement only, may give rise to practical problems.

Chapter 5 examines the impact of gender, sexual orientation and civil status on access to ART and the enjoyment of family life formed through ART. Aspiring single parents, women in a relationship with a same-sex or transgender male partner, and men in a same-sex relationship are reliant on gamete donation (as well as, in the case of male couples, surrogacy) in order to have a biological child and are particularly disadvantaged by prohibitions on third-party reproduction. These remain, nonetheless, within States’ margin of appreciation. However, where a child was born following the use of donated gametes or surrogacy abroad, the Strasbourg Court requires measures of protection. Significantly, the relationship of surrogate-born children with the intended non-biological parent is equally protected whether the genetic father has an opposite-sex or same-sex spouse. The chapter criticises, however, the less favourable treatment of commissioning mothers based on a conservative understanding of motherhood as gestational.