Go-ahead to gay marriages” “

With 5 votes in favour and 3 against, the German constitutional court in Karlsruhe, in a sentence issued on 17 July, ascertained the constitutionality of the so-called “Law for the elimination of the discrimination against homosexual unions: unions for life” that regulates the juridical consequences of unions between homosexuals. On the basis of figures supplied by the Catholic League for the family (FdK), some 4,500 unions between homosexuals have been registered ever since the law came into force in August 2001. The Court ruled that the law does not violate the principle of “particular protection” of the family, sanctioned by article 6, paragraph 1 of the German Constitution. Doubts about the unconstitutionality of the law at the formal and material level, expressed by the governments of Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia, had already been rejected by the Court in Karlsruhe. A “union for life”. According to a study cited by the sentence, “at least 47,000 homosexual couples are living together in Germany” (figures for 2000), whose “trust in the relationship, its stability, and their willingness reciprocally to help each other […] are not substantially different from those of heterosexual couples”. In its motivation of the sentence the court declares: “In proportion as the provisions of marriage law may be transferred […] to homosexual unions, marriage undoubtedly constitutes a social model. The overall image of marriage and the family is not thereby impaired”. According to the Court, “single analogies or parallels with marriage do not lead in any case to the violation” of the Constitution. “From the particular protection” guaranteed to marriage “it cannot be deduced that marriage must in principle, and constantly, be treated in a different way than other unions”; article 6 “prohibits only the specific principles of marriage law being transferred to other unions, but not the recognition of the equal validity of provisions linked to real circumstances such as cohabitation or affective affinities”. Homosexual couples may therefore henceforth contract “the union for life”, while marriage remains exclusive to heterosexual couples. One of the judges who voted against the ruling, Hans-Jürgen Papier, president of the constitutional court, deplored the fact that no limits to a “substantial recognition of homosexual unions as equal with marriage” were fixed. Also the right to adoption? A positive view of the sentence was expressed by the Socialists (SPD), Greens, Liberals (FDP) and Communists (PDS); a negative one by the Christian parties of the Union (CDU/CSU). As the next step, the government formed of a coalition of SPD and Greens intends to recognize also the right of homosexual couples to adoption and separation. Many adverse comments were also contained in the press; the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 18 July noted: “The legislator has carried out a levelling from above”. “From the viewpoint of content – the editorial continues – the particular protection [guaranteed by the Constitution to marriage] has become absolutely normal. The whole sentence is, in a disturbing manner, tantamount to an amendment of the Constitution, introduced through the back door”. In an article of 19 July, published by the same paper, Stefan Dietrich pointed out that the law contains an “irremediable” error, because it derives “the rights of persons not from a legitimate and socially recognized necessity but from sexuality”. The criticism of the Churches. The German Episcopal Conference expressed “profound dismay” at the sentence. The president of the German bishops, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, spoke of “a dramatic shift in the consciousness of values” since the judgement “does not fix substantial limits to a recognition that homosexual unions have the same rights as marriage” which “is increasingly becoming just one form of life among others”. A critical judgement on the sentence was also expressed by the Evangelical Church (Ekd): “The juridical gap between homosexual couples and marriage was not sufficiently maintained”, said its spokesman Thomas Krüger. The Catholic league for the family (FdK), the main German family association, expressed its view through its president Elisabeth Bußmann: “We expect – she said – a clear attitude [on the part of the State] to marriage and the family and the creation of conditions that permit the success of marriage and the development of the family”. In a statement published by the Catholic daily “Die Tagespost” on 20 July, the FdK emphasized that the protection of the family, sanctioned by the Constitution, is “also in the interest of society as a whole, because it is within it that the following generation, on which we all depend, grows up”. M.S.