“To make state support for families and partnerships primarily dependent on the extent to which the people involved play a certain role in biological reproduction is, in my view, a degradation of all people,” explained Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, in Berlin on Tuesday. “Because good parenthood requires considerably more than simply being a mother or father, nor is it guaranteed solely by a marital bond between a man and a woman.” Wolf was responding to a statement by the German Bishops’ Conference, which had spoken out against legal equality for homosexual people on Monday. The Limburg Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst opposed adoption rights for registered partners and said that heterosexual couples would generally offer “the best conditions for the development of a child”. Opening up civil marriage to homosexual couples would contradict the Basic Law’s understanding of marriage, according to which marriage and family are “intrinsically linked” due to the ability of men and women to reproduce biologically. According to Tebartz-van Elst, the marriage of man and woman is the “nucleus of society”. Wolf rejected the bishop’s comments, stating that “the thought patterns that are once again coming to light here were previously used to argue against the social equality of women and men. I very much hope that all devout Christian women in particular, who have benefited from cultural progress over the past decades, will recognize this narrowing of perspective to a function in biological reproduction.” Frieder Otto Wolf went on to say that from a “humanist perspective, the creation and preservation of a family- and child-friendly society is an important task in which all people who are willing to do so should be able to participate on an equal footing.” According to Wolf, the heterosexuality of all marriage partners, which Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst spoke of, could no more be considered a guarantee for such a society than heterosexual marriages per se are a guarantee for children. It is true that the long-term commitment of heterosexual parent couples, in which care and responsibility for children are borne, is an elementary form of social bonding. However, as a look at reality shows, this form of family formation is neither the rule, nor are there good reasons to promote it alone. Rather than specific ideas of marriage, it is important to support all forms of family “that create a space in which children can develop a basis for their independent lives”. Christian-conservative ideas could therefore not alone determine “what a family should be and the legal institution of marriage in a progressive community may also include more than is desired from a Catholic perspective.” Frieder Otto Wolf therefore pleaded not to let representatives of the Catholic Church play off the goal of promoting families and family partnerships in which people take responsibility for each other against the civilizational goal of abolishing discrimination against homosexual people.
“It is the right of devout Catholics to adhere to a certain ideal in their own lives. However, given the importance of family ties, a prudent policy should not exclude any couple who wish to take on family responsibility in a different way.” When discussing the promotion of family partnerships and families, the focus should therefore not be on recourse to roles in biological reproduction. “In order to create and maintain a family- and child-friendly society, the economic and social framework conditions should be at the center of the discussion. Instead of continuing to defend the unequal treatment of homosexual people through marriage and tax law, politicians should take a decisive stand to ensure that family communities are an attractive and desirable part of life for as many people as possible.”
