Marriage Equality in Germany: Conservative Normalisation Instead of Successful Anti-Gender Mobilisation

ABSTRACT

The Marriage Equality Act (2017) provides an example for Chancellor Angela Merkel's strategy of ‘leading from behind’ in the form of evolved facilitation as she changed her stance from publicly resisting to enabling this policy. Merkel's objections against marriage equality were shared by large parts of the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU): A draft version of the bill was postponed for two years in the justice committee due to internal conflicts in the CDU/CSU. Scholars argue that Merkel's shift from blocking to enabling the reform has been influenced by international as well as domestic developments. The focus of this paper is on a domestic factor that has been neglected so far, namely interactions between the far right and the conservative camp. Based on data from a case study on ‘anti-gender’ mobilisations against marriage equality in Germany and their influence on the parliamentary process, this article analyses shifts in the conservative camp.

Acknowledgements

I thank Phillip Ayoub and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The project ‘REVERSE – Antifeminism: Discourses of “crisis” with the potential to divide society?’ was funded by the National Ministry of Education and Science under Grant No. 01UG1738X. The project conducted five case studies in different empirical fields in Germany (antifeminism in academic discourse, in popular discourses on motherhood, in the fields of sexual education, integration classes for new migrants, and ‘marriage for all’, see Henninger and Birsl 2020). Christopher Fritzsche and Juliane Lang whose publications are quoted throughout the text were research associates in the case study on ‘marriage for all’, Anne Gehrmann was our student assistant and wrote her MA thesis on this issue.

2 All German quotations in this text were translated by the author.

3 Data on the online reach of the media studied are based on the online service Wolframalpha (https://www.wolframalpha.com/).

4 In protest against same sex marriage legislation also supported by his fellow party members, Spieker left the CDU in July, 2017 (noz 2017).

5 Cf. https://twitter.com/VollCornHirsch/status/879638783666376706 Accessed December 18, 2020.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection for this work was supported by the National Ministry of Education and Science (Bundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung), Germany [grant number 01UG1738X].

Notes on contributors

Annette Henninger

Annette Henninger is a professor for Gender and Politics at the University of Marburg, Germany. Her areas of expertise include labour market, family and gender equality policies, intersectionality and democracy, and anti-feminist mobilisations. Her recent publications include ‘This Train Has Left the Station: The German Gender Equality Regime on Course Towards a Social Democratic Model (2013–2017). In: German Politics, 28 (3), 2019: 462–481 (with Angelika von Wahl) and ‘Antifeminismen. ‘Krisen’-Diskurse mit gesellschaftsspaltendem Potential?’ Bielefeld: transcript (Antifeminisms: Discourses of ‘crisis’ with the potential to divide society?, co-edited with Ursula Birsl).