Vom Verbot zur Gleichberechtigung - Hirschfeld-Eddy-Stiftung

Axel Hochrein, Uta Kehr
The Meaning of Changes in Values
for Legislation and Equal Rights Policy
From 1871 to 1994, homosexuals in Germany were criminalised by Paragraph 175 of the
Penal Code and subject to legal prosecution. During the National Socialist period, the
persecution reached its barbaric peak, when tens of thousands of homosexual men were
sent to concentration camps, where many of them met with their deaths.
The Federal Republic of Germany adopted the stricter Paragraph 175 as a legacy from
the National Socialists in its Penal Code and applied it without mercy. The fact that one
group of victims from the National Socialist dictatorship continued to be persecuted in
the new, democratic Germany is one of the birth defects of our country. Within the context
of reunification and legal alignment between East and West Germany, Paragraph
175 was stricken from the Penal Code in 1994. In 2000, the German Bundestag unanimously
expressed its regret for the legal prosecution and acknowledged that the dignity
of the victims had been infringed upon. To this day, however, no compensation has been
provided for the victims of this persecution.
The elimination of state persecution and criminalisation cleared the way for laws to ensure
equal rights and protection against the discrimination of homosexuals. The law
regulating registered life partnerships in 2001 was, undoubtedly, a historical landmark
in this context. For the first time, lesbians and gay men could enter into an officially recognised
and legalised union. Through legal action, all the way up to the Federal Constitutional
Court, and persistent efforts to convince parliaments and governments, the imbalance
between the rights and obligations of a registered partnership in relation to a
marriage has been almost completely reduced.
The realisation of equal participation and the social recognition of people who do not
conform to the heterosexually defined norm is not just a matter of regulating how homosexual
couples live together. In the 1980s, a relapse into the period of stigmatisation
and discrimination threatened Germany, when HIV and Aids suddenly emerged as new
diseases. The rapidly re-emergent marginalisation that became evident in this context,
with terms like “gay plague”, demonstrated a latent homophobic atmosphere. A responsible
and comprehensive – instead of exclusionist – health policy is part of comprehensive
equality.
With the General Equal Treatment Act, a law came into force in 2006, which was intended
to prevent discrimination on grounds of “race”, ethnic background, gender, religion or
world view, a disability, age or sexual identity. In order to realise this goal, those who are
protected by this law are granted legal recourse in relation to employers and private per-
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