Independent Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination Ferda Ataman has called for a Bundestag vote on a constitutional amendment to better protect queer people. She told the Funke newspapers on Wednesday that this group “was systematically murdered under Nazism, and is still not protected in the constitution today.” The Basic Law must be supplemented so that Article 3 explicitly protects all groups targeted by extremists. “The Basic Law must be expanded so that Article 3 explicitly protects all groups that are attacked by extremists.”
“I am convinced that in a vote without party discipline, a two-thirds majority of the members of the German Bundestag would vote clearly in favor of protecting the gender and sexual diversity of people in Germany,” Ataman said. Those who talk about an “overload” of the Basic Law ignore “the real discrimination and declare the protection needs of queer people as secondary.”
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She referred to a remark by the head of the CDU/CSU faction, Thorsten Frei, who claimed that the Basic Law would be “overloaded” by the anti-discrimination protection of queer people (TheColu.mn reported). Politicians from other democratic parties criticized that remark (TheColu.mn reported).
Ataman: Queer people deserve more than lip service after the CSD attack
Ataman emphasized that, based on many inquiries to Germany’s federal anti-discrimination office, people “experience daily discrimination because of their sexual and gender identity.” Individuals affected by the Berlin Christopher Street Day attack deserve more than lip service. “It is high time to strengthen the rights and safety of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Intersex, and Queer people (LGBTQ+).”
For years, the debate about including sexual identity in Article 3 of the Basic Law has raged. Article 3 already contains a series of explicit anti-discrimination prohibitions—such as those based on sex, ethnicity, language, origin, or faith. At the end of September last year, the Bundesrat also demanded a corresponding amendment and submitted a draft bill to the Bundestag (TheColu.mn reported).
Such a constitutional change would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament. The federal government acknowledged the Bundesrat’s push but stressed that the Bundestag must decide whether to pass the proposal. In the wake of the CSD attack, the SPD, the Greens, and the Left urged the change. The AfD, by contrast, opposes extending constitutional protection to queer people.
LSVD+: CDU for Gay Persecution in the Federal Republic Partly Responsible
Queer organizations emphasize, especially in light of the rising influence of the AfD, that it is crucial to explicitly anchor sexual and gender minorities in the Basic Law’s anti-discrimination article. They remind that homosexuality was illegal under Paragraph 175 in the Federal Republic for two decades, and the weakened anti-gay clause remained in effect for another 25 years until it was repealed in 1994—“a decades-long criminalization of queer life that the Union helped enable,” noted LSVD+ board member Patrick Dörr. Therefore, they see the Union as having a duty to prevent a repetition of such discrimination.
