Joining the EU maybe wasn't such a good idea

From Catholic News Agency:

European Parliament urges member states to adopt legislation enacting homosexual marriage.

But if they don't follow through on what the EU urges:

European parliament to punish countries that do not approve homosexual “marriage”

This issue is particularly important for the countries of central and eastern Europe who have bans on homosexual marriage already. I read an article a long time ago about the failure of imagination in the post-communist countries. Basically the article suggested that joining the EU was wrong, given the EU's economies were totally different from post-communist economies and that a flood of cheap western goods into the east was not what local industries and businesses just emerging from communism needed.

The author of the article suggested as an answer to that problem that the newly democratic and capitalist countries form their own central/eastern European trading bloc, not in competition with the EU, but as a buffer for their own economies so that they could trade with each other while their economies got off the ground while at the same time regulating as a whole incoming imports to avoid unwanted effects.

Now, more than ever, these countries that are just now joining the EU or are on their way need to consider just how much of their sovereignty they want to sacrifice on the altar of 'Europe' after spending forty-five years with no sovereignty under the yoke of the Soviet Union.