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German parliament votes to legalise same-sex marriage German parliament votes to legalise same-sex marriage
(about 4 hours later)
Germany’s parliament has voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage, joining many other western democracies in granting gay and lesbian couples full rights, including adoption. German MPs have voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage, prompting joyous and unusual scenes in parliament as Green party politicians tossed glittered confetti across the chamber and gay couples sitting in the public gallery kissed and embraced.
Norbert Lammert, president of the parliament, said 393 lawmakers voted in favour, 226 voted against and four abstained. The vote by 393 to 226, with four abstentions, followed 40 minutes of often heated and highly emotional debate, reflecting a wider, decades-long argument over marriage equality. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, voted against the move, despite having paved the way for the law’s passage by inviting MPs to vote according to their conscience.
The chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she voted against the move because she believed marriage was for a man and a woman. She said the decision for her was a personal one, but she hoped the result would lead to greater social cohesion. Merkel had appeared to shift her longstanding opposition to gay marriage on Monday, when she said that she considered “the values lived out in a same-sex partnership equal to those in a heterosexual marriage”. After dropping a red “no” card into the ballot box in the Bundestag, she explained: “For me, marriage as defined by law is marriage between a man and a woman.
“It was a long, intensive, and for many also emotional discussion, that goes for me personally too, and I’m hopeful not only that there will be respect for either side’s opinions, but that it will also bring about more peace and cohesion in society,” she said.“It was a long, intensive, and for many also emotional discussion, that goes for me personally too, and I’m hopeful not only that there will be respect for either side’s opinions, but that it will also bring about more peace and cohesion in society,” she said.
The election-year bill was pushed by Merkel’s leftist rivals, who pounced on a U-turn she made on Monday in which she softened her stance against gay marriage, a manoeuvre that left many conservative politicians fuming. Since 2001, same-sex couples in Germany have been able to enter into civil unions, but not to marry. Under the new law, which is expected to take effect before the end of the year, married, same-sex couples will also be able to adopt children together.
The lower house approved the law on Friday, hours before the Bundestag begins its summer recess. The vote marked a stunning farewell victory for the Green politician Volker Beck, 56, a veteran gay rights campaigner who was ending a 23-year career as a lawmaker yesterday. “Today a bastion has fallen,” he told the German news agency DPA.
Before the vote, gay and lesbian groups cheered the push for marriage equality in Germany, where civil partnerships were legalised in 2001. The Lesbian and Gay Association, which has pushed for the reform since 1990, greeted the outcome, declaring that “Germany has voted for love”. “This is a historic day!” it said in a statement. “Not only for lesbians and gays, but also for a more just and democratic society.”
“It’s a real recognition, so it warms the heart,” said French engineer Christophe Tetu, 46, who lives in Berlin with his partner Timo Strobel, 51. It remains something of a mystery as to whether Merkel is a canny operator who had meant to trigger the vote all along, or whether she was, as much as anyone else in the Bundestag, taken by surprise that it had happened.
“We’re thinking about having a party, getting married and using our new rights to protect our relationship.” What is clear is that she will now be able to take credit for having triggered the vote, despite the fact she and her alliance have been opposing moves towards marriage equality for decades.
Strobel said he too was “overjoyed” the couple would be able to show family and friends “that we are committed to each other, that we will stay together and we will spend our lives together”. Merkel has also effectively taken the wind out of the sails of her junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), who have treated gay marriage as a key campaigning issue in the runup to elections in September.
The law will probably take effect before the end of the year. Some within the ranks of Merkel’s own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party were furious about having been bulldozed into a vote at short notice, although she will feel that she can hold her head high with disaffected colleagues because of her no vote.
Renate Künast of the Green party, which has pushed for decades for LGBT rights, quipped: “I would advise all registry offices in the country to boost staff numbers.” Merkel faced a barrage of criticism from within the chamber, with the sharpest rebuke coming from the SPD’s Johannes Kahrs, who accused her of having stood in the way of the law for years. “In all honesty, Frau Merkel, thanks for nothing,” he said.
The rapid series of events kicked off with an onstage interview Merkel gave to women’s magazine Brigitte, in which an audience member asked her: “When can I call my boyfriend my husband if I want to marry him?” The vote was set in motion during an audience with Merkel at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki theatre on Monday evening, hosted by the women’s magazine Brigitte. Merkel held court on the issue of marriage equality for eight minutes towards the end of the question-and-answer session, after Ulli Köppe, a journalist and events manager who was sitting in the audience, asked her: “When will I be able to call my boyfriend my husband?”
Merkel, who long opposed gay marriage with adoption rights, citing “the wellbeing of the children”, replied that her thinking had shifted since she met a lesbian couple who cared for eight foster children. Merkel responded pensively, saying she had given the issue much thought and had come to the conclusion that a same-sex partnership could be considered “just as valuable” as a heterosexual one, but she believed that “for those who are religious”, the question was more complicated, and ultimately down to an individual’s conscience.
Many read the surprising comments as a move to deny opposition parties a strong campaign issue before the elections on 24 September. She went on to describe a “life-changing experience” she had had after meeting a lesbian couple in her home constituency on Germany’s Baltic coast. She told the pair that her personal “sticking point” over same-sex marriage was the issue of children’s welfare.
In the live question-and-answer session, she said a personal encounter with Gundula Zilm and her partner in the chancellor’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern constituency had helped change her mind after years of feeling conflicted over the issue. Gundula Zilm, who has been in a relationship for years with her partner, Christine, with whom she cares for five foster children, invited Merkel to visit her at home to see how well her children were doing. Merkel said the encounter had led to a change of heart because authorities clearly had confidence in the couple’s ability to care for the children.
“I had a life-changing experience in my home constituency,” Merkel told the audience. She said she had confided in “a lesbian constituent” that her personal “sticking point” on gay marriage was the “welfare of children”. “If the state deems a child to be better off in a same-sex partnership than living in a household with a man and woman where violence is the norm, then I must recognise this and take it into consideration when making a judgment,” she said to applause.
Merkel said Zilm, who had fostered children from troubled homes for years with her partner, had responded: “‘I tell you what, come and visit me in my home, where I live with my lesbian partner and eight foster children. The foster children have been with us for a long time, and I think they’re doing well.’” Merkel said she had not yet taken Zilm up on her invitation but hoped to do so. Her U-turn was seized on by the SPD as an opportunity to hold a snap vote on the issue ahead of the summer recess and before elections on 24 September. The move was greeted with disdain by many of the members of Merkel’s conservative alliance, who accused the SPD of forcing the issue on the Bundestag.
Merkel’s coalition allies, the Social Democrats (SPD), as well as the Greens, far-left Linke and pro-business Free Democrats, declared a same-sex marriage law as a precondition for an alliance. Köppe, 28, who put the question to Merkel, was in the Bundestag’s public gallery on Friday to await the outcome of the debate he had effectively sparked. He said: “My question was totally spontaneous and unplanned. Because no one else in the audience was asking a question, I just grabbed the microphone.”
On Tuesday, after much buzz on social media, the SPD’s chancellor candidate, Martin Schulz, took Merkel at her word and broke coalition ranks to call for an immediate vote, a move the CDU condemned as a “breach of trust” after four years of joint rule. He said he had expected the chancellor to give him a “wishy-washy answer – as she’s done previously”, but that her detailed answer had surprised him. “It just happened to be the right question at the right time,” he said.
Merkel called the political ambush and rush to vote on such a weighty issue “sad and, above all, totally unnecessary”. But her change of stance left the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany as the only party to oppose same-sex marriage. He and his partner of 12 years would now consider getting married. “Just having a civil union as has been possible until now was simply not enough for my boyfriend and me.”
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a conservative daily, predicted that after the vote “it will be said Angela Merkel has avoided another stumbling block to post-election coalition talks”. Zilm, who watched the Bundestag debate on television, said she was “deeply disappointed” that Merkel had voted no, but was celebrating the outcome nonetheless. “I was very sad that Merkel voted against,” Zilm said. “But when the kids come home from school, we’re going to take them for an ice-cream.” She and her partner, Christine, already in a civil union, are also planning to marry, and have said they will invite Merkel.
“But the CDU will also have lost its right to be called a conservative party – and instead now appears willing to throw any conservative values overboard in order to keep up with the times.” The law is expected to come into force before the end of the year after it has been approved by the upper house and signed into law by the president. Renate Künast of the Greens urged registry offices across the country to “stock up on staff” to cope with the flood of marriage applicants.
Markus Ulrich, of the Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany, said Merkel had long argued against gay marriage “in an emotional way and never with real arguments”.
He added: “It’s very good that she took some time to better understand the reality of same-sex families and couples, in order to get a better picture of the situation. We think it’s very good and, even if this is happening only because of the electoral campaign, it doesn’t matter.”
Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
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