Once again, when gay rights are set back here in the US of
A, I try to look at the big picture and keep focused on long-term gains,
remembering that sometimes, as the French say, “il faut reculer pour mieux
sauter” (you have to take a step back to get a better jump). I remember, for example, the sick
feeling I had back in the 70s when Anita Bryant was having so much success
persuading Americans that gay men were all child molesters at heart. And then the surprise and welcome
backlash from that when her backwardness provoked the kind of outrage that
launched the careers of many a gay rights activist, who ultimately helped get
us the rights we have today. A
dark cloud with a silver lining if ever there was one.
More recently there was Prop. 8, this nasty push by some in
the official Roman Catholic hierarchy and their Mormon bandwagon jumpers to
remove the rights to marry gays had for a time in California. That has turned out to be another cause
to rally around, and the courts have looked at its content and its consequences
and spotted the bigotry. And this
has helped to raise the consciousness of many more Americans about how big the
problem is. The battle isn’t over,
though. News came of a setback the
other day in Hawaii. And then
there was the word today that what seemed recently like a clear path to
same-sex marriage victory in Maryland may be premature optimism. And, of course, there was that
Chick-Fil-A event. Can’t hide the
fact that was a real challenge for the glass-half-full folk.
I have to wonder, though. All those smiling faces at Chick-Fil-A, all that
righteousness, all that smug conviction as the godly American right bellied up
to eat fried chicken for Jesus. I
hope America is watching and not shrugging it off as I wanted so much to do at
first. It too could be the kind of
catalyst Anita Bryant was and Prop. 8 seems to be. One can hope.
Meanwhile, I am greatly encouraged by what is happening in
Germany. In case you don’t follow
these things too carefully, Germany is going places these days, in terms of
civil rights. They did not follow
Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden in Europe and
other countries elsewhere in granting full marriage rights to LGBT folks, but
they did institute a civil union arrangement in 2001 (following France in
1999), granting them most of the rights heterosexual couples enjoy. “Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaften”
(registered life partnerships) have enabled gays to enjoy pretty much all rights
except joint adoption, pension, and tax benefits.
Over time, the injustice of some of those exceptions has
been mitigated. In 2004, a new law
was passed that permitted a partner to adopt his or her stepchild, and alimony
and divorce laws were also simplified, and in 2008, transsexuals were granted
the right to stay married to the partners they had before transitioning.
Germany has the same kind of right/left distinction, the
same divide between conservatives and liberals the United States has, but it
has a very different center. As you would expect, notable resistance to change came from the conservative
parties, the CDU/CSU unions (Christian Socialists in Bavaria, Christian
Democrats elsewhere), the parties historically tied to organized religion, and
the market-centered deregulation-oriented FDP (Liberal Democrats). An especially egregious imbalance remained, after the pro-gay reforms, in the tax laws. If you were the
survivor of a married couple, you paid between 7 and 30% in inheritance
(specifically land-transfer) taxes.
If you were in a registered life partnership, you paid between 17 and
50%.
Then things began to change. First off, just over a month ago, on June 28th of
this year, the Green Party submitted a proposal in the Bundestag to fully legalize
same-sex marriages. That would
have cleaned up the still nagging fact that gay couples could not adopt and
were paying inheritance taxes at a higher rate. It failed 309
to 260 with 12 abstentions, with the dividing line, as usual, between the conservatives, CDU/CSU and
the Liberal Democrats on the right, and the progressives, the Left Party, the
Socialists and the Greens on the left.
This fact must have been on the mind of Christine Lambrecht,
of the socialists, when she complained that it is “unacceptable for registered
partners to have to ask for their rights piece by piece.”
Then, more notably, apparently out of nowhere (at least it
seems that way to me as an outsider), thirteen members of the CDU registered
their displeasure in writing that “time and time again policy makers have to be
ordered by the Federal (Constitutional) Court to abolish inequality.” Angela Merkel’s Health
Minister, Kristina Schröder, soon joined them. And Vice Chancellor and Minister for Economics, Philipp
Rösler, followed suit. Cynics will
tell you there is a political motive behind all this, that none of this stems
from personal conviction, but what else is new? Ms. Schröder reasoned – don’t miss this – that
extending the same rights to gays that straights now have “enhances conservative values.”
What is so mind-blowing about all this from an American
perspective is that these are all conservatives. Which is to say the terms we use here for progressives (not
to use that word the right is trying to turn into a bad word and the left is
letting them – liberals) and conservatives don’t match up. Their conservatives are left of our
center by some considerable amount.
Which is another way of saying we have allowed our center to move so damned
far to the right we’re like the frogs in the boiling water – dying and not even
noticing it, most of us.
It’s still in the works, in Germany, this boring tax system
modification which means a whole lot if you’re the survivor of a gay life
partnership. But it would seem to
be on its way, and Germany will be the richer for it.
We will take a little longer, sodomized (and not in the fun
way) as we are in this country by the worshipers of the Golden Idols of
Scriptural Literalism and Big Daddy Catholicism.
Nothing much to do but tend the garden, listen to Bach and
Mozart, clean the bathroom sink and wait for the day the U.S. catches up with
Germany. And most of the rest of
the modern world. And not just in
gay rights, either, but I won’t beat two drums at once just now.
And if all else fails, you can always say you learned a new
German word: Ehegattensplittung.
Quick and easy German lesson:
Ehe is German
for marriage, and Gatte
is the word for mate – not in the buddy sense, traditionally, but in the make-babies and
“other half” sense. Put them
together and you’ve got spouse – Ehegatte.
Then put this word together with the English word splitting, and you’ve got Ehegattensplitting. Don’t worry about the n.
That leaves you with a strange word – “spouse splitting” – which makes no sense until you realize that Germany, like California, is into
community property notions and filing taxes jointly.
The problem has been that that option has only been
available to you if you are in a regular marriage. If you are in a same-sex partnership, you have had to
file separately. Since
Germany’s income taxes are graded, if your incomes are unequal, filing jointly
can be a big advantage, since the one with the bigger income gets pulled down
into a lower tax bracket.
In today’s Süddeutsche Zeitung I came across this:
“Fraktionschef Frank-Walter Steinmeier kündigte einen fraktionsübergreifenden Antrag zum Ehegattensplitting im Bundestag an.”
Literally, that’s
“Faction chief Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced a faction comprehensive proposal for Ehegattensplitting in the Bundestag.”
Steinmeier is a lefty, to be sure, and leader of the opposition, but this suggests he is forcing the hand of the conservatives, insisting they put their money where their mouth is. And that means, after some grunting and groaning and reading between the lines, I decided there was good
reason to translate it this way:
“Frank-Walter Steinmeier, leader of his party’s faction, filed a motion in the Bundestag on behalf of a number of political groups to give life partners the same option to file jointly that married couples now enjoy.”
That’s a pretty free translation, of course, but then I’m a
liberal.
My point is not that German has big words. It is that Germany's conservatives, many of them, are looking pretty cool to me at the moment. There seems to be consensus that the conservatives have come around and will stop holding back full rights for gays and lesbians, virtually opening the door to full and equal marriage. Some are looking forward to the day they can entice more gays into the conservative parties. We won't go there.
I’d still vote Green, probably, if I were a German, or at least social democrat. But, as an American, I’m green with
envy that Germany has a political scene I could only wish we could import as
readily as we do their Audis and Volkswagens and Mercedes. Mercedeses. Whatever.
You know what I mean.
1 comment:
Wonderfully instructive report on the German situation, Alan, which is always a bit murky to me as an outsider.
It strikes me that the more downright stupid we Americans appear to the rest of the world about these matters, the more we provoke constructive change in some other societies, which don't want to be equated with, say, Afghanistan under the Taliban or Uganda.
As many of us Americans are intent on being identified these days, whether we know it or not . . . .
We sauter in the direction of outlandish "bible"-based discrimination, and the rest of the civilized world reculers with alacrity in the opposite direction, in its haste not to appear like the Americans!
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