Domestic Partners Bill Advances

After a sharp debate over what conservatives branded an “attack on family and society,” German lawmakers took a first step Friday toward giving legal recognition to gay couples.

Lawmakers from the governing Social Democrats and Greens used their majority in the lower house to push through legal changes expected to give gays and lesbians the right to sign “life partnerships” by the middle of next year.

The changes would allow gay couples to exchange vows at local government offices and require a court decision for divorce. Same-sex couples also would receive rights given heterosexual spouses in inheritance and health insurance.

“The long years of discrimination are over,” declared Greens leader Kerstin Mueller, whose party led the push for the changes. “Lesbians and gays today get their rights.”

Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said the aim was to support lasting relationships between people regardless of their sexual orientation.

But conservatives, who have denounced the plan as “Marriage Light,” could scuttle parts of the bill when it reaches the upper house of parliament, and are weighing whether to ask the country’s highest court to rule the plan unlawful.

The German vote came more than a decade after Denmark became the first country in the world to give homosexual couples legal status in 1989. Others, including France and Norway, introduced similar laws in the past decade.

Before the vote, conservative lawmakers criticized the changes as undermining the “special protection” for marriage in Germany’s postwar constitution.

Norbert Geis, a lawmaker for the conservative Christian Social Union, said the new institution was a “violation of our culture” and “the worst attack on family and society.”

Gay and lesbian groups, who have campaigned for a decade for partnership rights, welcomed the parliament vote as long overdue.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s government promised to pursue the goal of legal status for gay couples after he ousted Helmut Kohl in 1998 elections.