Germany

The civil partnership law passed in Germany in 2001 as yet fails to provide equal rights, particularly in a number of tax- and civil service-related matters and in the area of joint adoption. However, the new coalition government CDU/CSU and the FDP has announced in the coalition contract to want to change this. Since 2005 the surviving relative's care and the so-called "stepchild" adoption have been made law. We will however, have to wait for common adoption rights. No likelihood of agreement here at present. Since 2006 there is also a rather tentative general parity act providing gay men and lesbians with some protection from discrimination in industrial and civil law. The state itself continues to discriminate against homosexuals in its tax laws and civil service law unchanged, but has meanwhile been forced to alter a number of regulations found to be unconstitutional by high court decisions. Notable is a comment by the Federal Constitutional Court in 2009 that no disadvantage for alternative partnerships is derivable from the "special protection of marriage" anchored in the constitution. The general age of consent in Germany is 16. Germany has had a flourishing LGBT-infrastructure for decades. The large communities in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg or Munich include countless associations, companies, bars and nightclubs. Even medium-sized cities have their own gay scenes. But acts of anti-gay violence still occur and discrimination persists, especially in industrial law and the Catholic Church, or from arch-conservative politicians. Even if in last decades the acceptance of gay-lesbian lifestyles has perceptibly increased, unfortunately homophobia, on the other hand, appears to be increasing. The important years of educational and acceptance work of the lesbian and gay federation (LSVD) and other organizations has decisively contributed to an increase in acceptance. Recently however the LSVD must increasingly undertake anti-homophobia work. The Bavarian Alpine region in the south with king Ludwig's romantic castles and the beer capital Munich, the North and Baltic Sea beaches with their offshore islands, the Rhine valley to the west featuring medieval fairy-tale castles and the carnival centres Cologne, Mainz and Düsseldorf, and finally the Saxon east and its capital Dresden, called the "Florence on the Elbe" river, are all classic travel destinations that also attract many lesbians and gay men.