Breaking the Spell: Examining the European Court of Human Rights Ruling on Same-Sex Representation in Children's Fairy Tales in Macat? v Lithuania

• Date: 01 January 2024

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Breaking the Spell: Examining the European

Court of Human Rights Ruling on Same-Sex

Representation in Children’s Fairy Tales in

Macatėv Lithuania

RACHAEL BRENNAN*

Introduction

On 23 January 2023, the European Court of Human Rights (the ‘ECtHR’ or the

‘Court’) issued a landmark decision against the Lithuanian government, nding

that it had violated the Applicant’s right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the

1950 European Convention on Human Rights (the ‘ECHR’ or the ‘Convention’).1

e Applicant, a children’s author and member of the LGBTQ+ community,

brought an application to the ECtHR claiming the authorities in Lithuania had

unlawfully infringed her right to free speech by temporarily suspending a children’s

fairy tale book depicting same-sex relationships that she had authored, and by

subsequently labelling the book as harmful to children. e ECtHR held in favour

of the Applicant, unanimously nding that the Lithuanian government (the

‘Government’) had no legitimate aim for restricting the Applicant’s rights.2 e

case was the rst of its kind whereby the Grand Chamber had been invited to assess

restrictions imposed on literature about same-sex relationships directly aimed at

children.3

e Facts

e Book

In 2012, the publishing house of the Lithuanian University of Educational

Sciences (the ‘University’) applied for funding from the Ministry of Culture (the

* B CL (DCU), LLM (UB), Solicitor. e author would like to express her heartfelt gratitude to

Richard Bunworth for his invaluable insights and encouragement throughout this work. e author

would also like to thank the editorial board members of the Hibernian Law Journal. In particular,

Róisín Rainey, Aoibh Cassidy, and Daire McCormack-George. e views and opinions expressed

in this article are solely those of the author.

1 Macatė v Lithuania App no 61435/19 (ECHR, 23 January 2023).

2 Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (European

Convention on Human Rights, as amended) (ECHR) arts 32, 33, and 34.

3 Macatė (n 1) [203].

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