German gay couples tie knot after decades of struggle
Frankfurt, Germany -Germany's first gay couples to be married will tie the knot Sunday, after decades of struggle that campaigners say still has ground to make up.
Couples will convert existing civil partnerships or set the seal on their relationships for the first time in Berlin, while others exchange rings in Hanover, Hamburg and other cities.
Local authorities rushed to get weddings underway as soon as possible, after lawmakers voted on June 30 to give Germany's roughly 94,000 same-sex couples the right to marry.
But German bureaucracy being what it is, government software will be unable to officially record two men or two women as married until next year -- meaning some online paperwork will still register them as "husband" and "wife".
"Finally our country is joining the rest of Europe!" said Joerg Steinert, head of gay and lesbian rights organisation LSVD in Berlin and Brandenburg state.
The Netherlands was the first country to legalise gay marriage in 2000, followed piecemeal by 14 European neighbours like Spain, Sweden, Britain and France.
But Germany made do with a 2001 civil partnership law, extended over the years to remove more and more gaps between gay and straight couples' rights.
That was "a first breach in the institution," Steinert said, paving the way for Sunday's "very symbolic step."
"We won't be a secondclass couple any longer," Bode Mende, who with partner Karl Kreil will form the first couple to marry in Berlin, told newspaper Neues Deutschland Thursday.
Mende and Kreil, together since 1979, have for years campaigned for equal marriage rights.
The law now reads "marriage binds two people of different sexes or the same sex for life".
By extending existing law to same-sex pairs, they automatically gain the same tax advantages and adoption rights as heterosexual families, avoiding the endless back-and-forth in some nations over adoption.