Germany legalises same-sex marriage but Merkel votes no
Berlin, June 30: Germany legalised same-sex marriage on Friday despite the personal objections of Chancellor Angela Merkel, as the nation joined many other western democracies in granting gay and lesbian couples full rights including adoption.
The election-year bill was pushed by Ms Merkel’s leftist rivals, who pounced on comments she made early this week suggesting a policy U-turn — a manoeuvre that left her conservative lawmakers fuming.
Ms Merkel allowed MPs of her Christian Democratic Party (CDU) to vote according to their conscience on the bill rather than follow the party line, which has for years been to oppose the reform.
The gay marriage law passed by a margin of 393 to 226 on the parliament’s last day before the summer recess — a moment jubilant supporters celebrated by throwing confetti in the Bundestag.
But Ms Merkel said she had voted against the legalisation out of her personal conviction.
Germany’s parliament also voted to punish social media giants with fines of up to 50 million euros ($57 million) if they systematically fail to remove illegal hate speech.
Berlin took the measure, one of the toughest in the world, after a surge in racist and incendiary speech online, particularly since the arrival of around one million asylum-seekers since 2015.
Under German law, Holocaust denial, incitement of hatred, and racist and anti-Semitic speech are illegal. But critics warned that the prohibitive fines would stifle legitimate free speech by prompting online giants like Twitter and Facebook to excessively delete and censor posts as a precaution. — AFP