1 A note on terminology: in an effort to be precise about which constituencies are encompassed in terminology, I use LGBTQIA+, the most common acronym at the time of this writing, as an umbrella term to designate non-straight sexualities and genders. Other abbreviations, for example, LGB and LGBT, refer to contexts in which particular identities are specified; that is, these acronyms are intentionally non-inclusive. Finally, I use “gay” and “lesbian” to refer to specific identities, whereas “queer” is meant to designate non- and anti-normative practices and embodiments.

2 The demeaning term Homo-Ehe was informally used in public discourse to refer to the LPartG. The law did not extend full-fledged marital rights to lesbian and gay couples, but rather recognized same-sex unions only as domestic partnerships with limited privileges. Thus, the term Homo-Ehe was used to differentiate it from heterosexual marriage both in terms of its legal scope, but also as distinct from the values and traditions of the institution of marriage itself. The catachrestic term marriage equality used in the US to describe legal same-sex unions is also problematic. As I demonstrate throughout this essay, civil marriage in the US and Germany operates within a rights-based discourse. However, both in terms of its history and as a contemporary arrangement of kinship, the institution remains non-inclusive and assimilationist. Thus, we should not take the claim to equality literally.

3 By most accounts, the Stonewall uprising is thought of as the beginning of Western LGBT movements. Its impact in West Germany must be more thoroughly explored, in particular with respect to what knowledge gays and lesbians had about the uprising. Von Praunheim, for example, was unaware of Stonewall when he made Nicht der Homosexuelle (Kuzniar 94). Historian Carla MacDougall challenges the validity of the narrative that constructs the Stonewall rebellion as the watershed moment in LGBT activism in West Germany (10).

4 It is too complicated to go into here, but the law was actually divided into two parts because of the difficulties its proponents saw in getting support from the Bundesrat for certain provisions, namely those around taxes. This splitting of the law was one of the legal arguments that Saxony, Thuringia, and Bavaria used to support their Supreme Court case that the LPartG was unconstitutional, and they lost their case on all counts. Political scientist Kelly Kollman provides an important history of the global political mobilization around legislating same-sex marriage in Western Europe and North America (“Same-Sex Unions”).

5 See Moeller’s comprehensive and illuminating discussion of this case (“The Homosexual”).

6 The part of Article 6 in question, at least according to the opponents of the law, was, “Ehe und Familie stehen unter dem besonderen Schutze der staatlichen Ordnung.” (“Marriage and the family shall enjoy the special protection of the state.”).

7 See the conversation between Fulda archbishop Johannes Dyba and Green Party member Volker Beck, the so-called father of the Homo-Ehe, published in Der Spiegel (Mestmacher and Wensierski 88). The letters to the editor in response to Dyba’s remarks in an earlier issue of Der Spiegel suggest that the clergyman’s position on the LPartG and homosexuality in general did not resonate with Spiegel-readership. Letter writers called his views medieval and reminiscent of National Socialism (“Verkommene Ansichten” 17).

8 Geis, for example, said “Nirgendwo erfahren die Kinder größere Geborgenheit als bei Vater und Mutter” (“Nowhere do children experience a stronger feeling of security than with their mother and father”; Deutscher Bundestag 14/115; my trans.; 10962).

9 Kelly Kollman makes a related observation in her article that compares the different approaches to same-sex unions in Austria and Germany (“European Institutions” 58).

10 See, for instance, the Spiegel interview with minister of justice Herta Däubler-Gmelin (Lersch 103) and the Beck/Dyba debate mentioned earlier.

11 Same-sex marriage was permissible in many states and in Guam before the federal Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that DOMA was unconstitutional. One of the legal grounds used to argue against the ban was the Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted during US Reconstruction to extend citizenship and equal rights to formerly enslaved people. The 2015 case illustrates the imbrication of race and sexuality as advanced in the queer of color critique.

12 Judith Butler uses the term “heterosexual matrix” to designate the system of discourses that naturalizes sex, gender, and sexuality, each defined relationally through compulsory heterosexuality (Gender Trouble 151, n. 6).