Germany hails its first gay marriages

TWO men made history yesterday, becoming the first same-sex couple to marry in Germany as campaigners remained defiant over the time it took to make it law.

Wedding bells rang out in Berlin, Hamburg, Hanover and other cities where local authorities opened on a Sunday to allow weddings on the day the law came into effect.

Bodo Mende, 60, and Karl Kreile, 59, exchanged vows in southern Berlin and embraced before friends, family and a throng of photographers and TV crews from around the world.

“I’m unbelievably satisfied… to be recognised as a completely normal couple and no longer to have a second-class marriage,” Kreile said. He and Mende are longtime same-sex marriage campaigners who have been together since 1979.

The weddings came 90 days after lawmakers voted to give Germany’s 94,000 same-sex couples the right to marry following a shift in position by Angela Merkel, the Chancellor.

“Finally equal law for equal love,” tweeted Justice Minister Heiko Maas, as Germany became the 15th European nation to legalise gay marriage.

Johannes Kahrs, an opposition politician from Hamburg, said: “We would gladly have had it sooner. Thanks for nothing, Frau Merkel,” he added, echoing the reproach he flung at her in a stormy speech in parliament when the law was passed.