Frieder Otto Wolf, President of the Humanist Association of Germany, is calling on members of all parliamentary groups to make a clear commitment to the legal equality of homosexual people for tomorrow’s debate in the German Bundestag on adoption rights in registered civil partnerships and marriage equality.
“Today’s resistance to this step is rooted in the anti-progressive ideas from which the fight against equality for women in our society was waged until just a few decades ago,” recalled Frieder Otto Wolf. The lack of political support from Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had previously spoken out against equality for homosexuals in tax and marriage law, must therefore be particularly alarming. The Chancellor’s resistance to date is a symbol of the power of backward-looking ideologies when those who today benefit from the decades-long development of gender equality in laws and society now turn against it. “This is a betrayal of the humanist ideals that formed the basis for our cultural emancipation from social models based on heteronomy and oppression from previous millennia,” says Wolf. The political debate on the legal equality of homosexual people is therefore an important moral touchstone, not only for the German Chancellor, but for all decision-makers. “Those who seek to close ranks with strident minorities in the German Bundestag and in religious communities who continue to polemicize against equality are at the same time supporting convictions that would deny homosexual people and their partnerships the right to equal participation.” Finally, Frieder Otto Wolf also warned that the political opponents of equality are trying to create a negative mood in society by announcing radical consequences for family policy. He referred to media reports which mention the abolition of child benefit as a possible consequence of the reforms. “A policy that pits the promotion of family communities against the overdue equality of all family communities with reference to the costs to society creates absurd contradictions in two fundamental social concerns without any need.”
