World Marriage Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of February. The day commemorates husbands and wives as the foundation of the family and the basic unit of society and takes place a week before Valentine’s Day this year.

The day was inaugurated 28 years ago to pay tribute to the institution. These days, however, the sacrament of marriage is diminishing as cohabitation agreements and defacto relationships are becoming more popular around the world. In fact, it seems the most eager supporters of the sacrament of marriage are the homosexual community.

In Greece, daily Kathimerini newspaper notes that cohabitation agreements are increasing at 30% per year. Data of the Greek registry office states that when the cohabitation agreement came into effect in 2009, only a total of 161 couples opted for this instead of a religious or civil wedding. However, these numbers have increased significantly with 1,568 people opting for a cohabitation agreement in 2014 and 143 of these signed in January 2015 alone.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Betty Batziana have opted for this, further increasing the popularity of cohabitation.