Germany’s lower house of Parliament voted June 30 to legalize same-sex “marriage,” following initial opposition by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and intense debate by lawmakers. While Germany’s upper legislative branch, the Bundesrat, is expected to add its approval the first week of July, and send the bill to German President Frank Walter Steinmeier, there remains solid opposition to the move, which would give German homosexual couples full marital rights and allow them to adopt children.
Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant minister, had been the most visible representation of that opposition, but had softened her stance in recent days, saying that she would allow lawmakers from her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), to vote as they wished. Following the 393-226 vote for homosexual marriage, Merkel said that while she still believes marriage exists only between a man and a woman, she had relaxed her opposition for the sake of “social cohesion and peace” within the nation.
According to a recent survey, Merkel’s opinion against homosexual marriage puts her in a decided minority, with 83 percent of Germans saying that they favor “marriage equality.”
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However, some lawmakers remained staunchly opposed to the measure, with Erika Steinbach, who earlier quit the CDU over Merkel’s disastrous open-door immigration policy, accused the chancellor of abandoning the CDU’s conservative values. “[Same-sex marriage] runs against the CDU’s own party program, which sees marriage as being between a man and a woman, so CDU decisions are clearly not worth the paper they are written on,” said Steinbach. It would be hard to exaggerate how excruciating this is.”
Volker Kauder, the leader of the Parliament’s conservative bloc, echoed those sentiments, saying after the vote that “it remains clear same-sex partnership is not the same thing as marriage. In our cultural circles, marriage has for centuries been a union between man and woman.”
Similarly, Gerda Hasselfeldt, who leads the Christian Social Union in Parliament, said that while all Germans deserve respect and dignity, marriage between a man and a woman remains the foundation for family life and the “basis of order in our state.”
Among Christians in Germany, the Catholic Church led the opposition to the measure. “The fathers of the [German] constitution gave marriage such pride of place because they wanted to protect and strengthen those who, as a mother and father, want to give life to their children,” said Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin in a statement after the vote. “I regret the fact that the legislature has given up on essential aspects of the marriage concept in order to make the latter amenable to same-sex partnerships.”
Archbishop Koch, chairman of the commission for marriage and family of the German bishops’ conference, said that with the legalization of homosexual marriage, the Catholic Church in Germany will “increasingly face the challenge of convincingly presenting the vitality of the Catholic understanding of marriage. At the same time, I recall that the sacramental character of our marriage understanding remains unaffected by today’s decision.”
In its own statement, the German Bishops’ Conference emphasized that marriage as defined by God and the Church remains “the bond of life and love of woman and man as a principally lifelong connection with the fundamental openness to life. We are of the opinion that the State must continue to protect and promote marriage in this form.”
