Germany, France and gay marriage: Conservatives speak louder in secular France than in pious Germany

Main image:  AS YOU might expect, Germany’s Catholic hierarchs were less than thrilled when legislators voted on June 30th, by 393 votes to 226, to legalise same-sex marriage. Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin was one of many top clerics who voiced the church’s view that a distinction between civil partnership, for gay couples, and marriage, for heterosexual ones, ought to be kept. The decision to do away with it, he grumbled,abandons the differentiated perception of various forms of partnership in order to stress the value of same-sex partnerships...Differentiation isn’t discrimination, and same-sex cohabitation can be valued through other institutional arrangements without opening up the legal institute of marriage.But in truth, public opposition to the change has been relatively muffled, especially when compared to the huge street demonstrations by social conservatives which were triggered by a similar measure in France in 2013.The very fact that German bishops insist they see some value in same-sex partnerships (so long as they are not described as marriage) might be surprising to an American who is accustomed to tooth-and-nail culture wars.In France, gay marriage became law in May 2013. Street protests by social conservatives, including four huge rallies in Paris within six months, failed to stop ...