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Germany: Lawmakers Divided Over Specifying Constitutional Protection for LGBTQ Community

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Lawmakers in Germany are divided over whether to amend the country’s post-Nazi era 1949 Constitution to specify that members of the LGBTQ community cannot be discriminated against on the grounds of their sexual orientation or identity, DW reports.

Persecuted by Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich National Socialism (Nazi) regime, homosexuals were the only group to then also be deliberately omitted from specific protections in the new post-WW2 Constitution, DW reports. Indeed, section 175 of the German Penal Code which the Nazi regime used to persecute homosexuals was only repealed in 1994.

In 2021, Germany’s governing coalition partners the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) indicated their interest in amending Article 3 of the German constitution to include LGBTQ persons, DW reports.

Article 3 currently provides: “No person shall be favored or disfavored because of gender, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith or religious or political opinions.” The provision does not specify that no one can be disfavored on the grounds of their sexual identity.

Supporters of an amendment continue to push for change but face an uphill struggle as the constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, and the Bundesrat, which represents the federal states, DW notes. A constitutional amendment requires the support of the country’s conservative parties (the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union), which in this case are not inclined to give it.

“Changing the list of basic rights, in other words, the heart of our constitution, should only be done for very special reasons,” Thorsten Frei, parliamentary secretary for the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, told media outlet Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland. “But I also don’t see any reason to amend the constitution, since protection against discrimination on the basis of gender is already enshrined in article 3.”