Date: Sun, 13 Mar 1994 09:35:00 EDT From: Song Weaver Subject: Anti-gay law removed in Germany This was posted to soc.motss --Julie -------------------------------- Just read a piece of good news in the paper, and I thought I'd pass it on to you: On Thursday, the Bundestag (German parliament) by a large majority decided to abolish 175 of the Criminal Code, which put sexual activities between a man older than 18 years and a man below 18 under penalty of up to 5 years imprisonment (the age of consent for heteros has been 16 years). This paragraph has been THE symbol of legal discrimination against gays (lesbians were not mentioned) for the last 124 years, leading to the destruction of thousands of lives and carreers of gay people. 175 was introduced into the first national German penal code in 1871 under pressure of clerical and conservative political groups; even at that time, the "Koenigliches wissenschaftliches Deputat fuer das Medizinalwesen" (medical advisory group on legal questions) urged legislators to refrain from introducing this paragraph, without being listened to. Countless initiatives to get rid of this paragraph by gay groups (many of them led by Magnus Hirschfeld, the great pioneer of the gay rights movement) and the socialist/communist parties were voted down, often by narrow margins. In 1935, the Nazi government changed the paragraph and put homosexuals under even harsher penalties; tens of thousands of gays and lesbians were killed in concentration camps, for which the 175 provided the legal disguise. After Germany's liberation from fascism, the paragraph remained in place (in the toughened Nazi version). While Nazi court sentences against Jewish or political victims were declared invalid and the survivors were (at least partially) compensated after the war, sentences against gays, according to a decision of the West German supreme court in 1957, remained in place and were considered valid; homosexual victims of the Nazi regime were denied compensation for the horrors they suffered in the concentration camps. Nazi sentences because of convictions according to 175 remained in the "offender's" criminal record; West German police continued to compile lists of "homosexuals and perverts". Only in 1969, the paragraph was reformed; sexual acts between males above 18 now were exempt from punishment. (In East Germany, the paragraph was already abolished in 1968, leading to an outcry in the right-wing West German press about communists and perverts being in cahoots). Now finally, the paragraph has been removed altogether, and the Criminal Code does not mention homosexuality anymore. The legal AoC is 16 years for gays and hets alike. While that does not mean that discrimination against gays and lesbians will end anytime soon, it's certainly a great victory in the 124-year-old fight against this paragraph. I'm excited that it finally happened; I'm sad thinking how long it took, how many people lost their lives, were disgraced, fired from their jobs, thrown into jail just because they loved another man.