Religion, Politics and Sexuality in Romania LUCIAN TURCESCU & LAVINIA STAN SINCE THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM religion has played an increasingly important role in Romanian political and social life. The Orthodox church, which commands the loyalty of some 86% of the population, remains the country’s most important religious denomination, exerting a considerable sway on local politics. Beside the Orthodox, who follow the new Gregorian calendar, there are around 4.7% Roman Catholics, 3.2% Reformed Christians and some 0.9% Greek Catholics, all of whom are present primarily in the western regions of the country. A total of 16 denominations are officially registered in Romania, but a plethora of other religious groups and new religious movements are active, subject to discrimination from the state and considerable pressure from the Orthodox church, which considers itself the ‘national church’ entitled to a privileged position relative to other religions. The country’s major religious denominations have actively sought to shape democracy, mentalities and lifestyle in Romania. Sexuality is one area where the churches have worked together with, and often against, the post-communist state to impose their views and define acceptable and unacceptable sexual behaviour for society, their followers and members of the clergy. In Romania sexual behaviour and practices have been a contested territory for church and state throughout the last century. In a traditional society like Romania mores and mentalities have remained close to the conservative villages, which rejected homosexuality, scorned prostitutes, while tacitly accepting adulterous husbands, and denounced abortion, while developing an impressive knowledge of medicinal plants able to induce it. The communist authorities increased jail sentences for homosexual behaviour, seen as a factor undermining the creation of the ‘new socialist man’, and imposed a comprehensive pro-natal programme that ultimately failed to protect the country against population loss. Homosexuality was used as an accusation against dissenters too. 1 After 1989 the topics of homosexuality, abortion and prostitution deeply divided Romanian society and sparked heated public debates involving the political class, religious leaders, the local academic community, mass media and the public at large. Discussions generally revolved around the adoption of new laws that would allow Romania to conform to European Union standards and solve the country’s most delicate social problems. A combination of internal factors like shifts in accepted mores and external factors including the pressure of the European community EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES Vol. 57, No. 2, March 2005, 291 – 310 ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/05/020291-20 # 2005 University of Glasgow DOI: 10.1080/09668130500051924