Merkel U-turn on gay marriage
GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has dropped her opposition to same-sex marriage, giving gay and lesbian groups reason to cheer yesterday while depriving opposition parties of a key campaign issue three months before elections.
Speaking at a forum on Monday evening, Merkel said she was open to a vote of conscience on the issue, in which lawmakers are freed from toeing the party line -and in which the reform would almost certainly pass.
Previously, the leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) had repeatedly voiced her reservations about full marriage rights, including joint adoption, for same-sex couples, citing the wellbeing of the children.
Merkel’s shift comes as polls show that large majorities of German voters, and all other mainstream parties, are in favour of allowing same-sex marriage, which has been legalised in many other major Western democracies in recent years.
Germany currently allows so-called civil unions, which were legalised in 2001 under a green-left government.
They grant homosexual couples equal rights in many areas such as tax to inheritance rules, but do not allow joint adoptions.
Merkel’s about- turn opens the door for her CDU to form potential alliances after the September 24 vote, with either current partners the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens or the Free Democrats (FDP), who all favour gay marriage.
Only the populist and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party opposes same-sex marriage. Merkel said her thinking on the issue had shifted after a memorable experience when she recently met a lesbian couple who care for eight foster children in her Baltic coast electorate.
Merkel used a characteristically vague formulation to drop the bombshell news: “I would rather like to shift the discussion in a direction of a vote of conscience rather than imposing anything from the top.”
The words sparked a flurry of reactions on social media overnight, with the #EheFuerAlle (MarriageForAll) hashtag trending on Twitter.