Update: Marriage Equality Bill Will Almost Certainly Pass German Parliament Within Less Than 1 Hour!
Last edited Fri Jun 30, 2017, 02:13 AM - Edit history (1)
Update: 38 minutes of parliamentary discussion is happening now, the forced vote afterwards is very, very likely to succeed.
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This is quite the surprising change in German politics, even though a vast majority of Germans support marriage equality. I want to describe the events leading up to Merkels change of mind yesterday, so this will be a long post. 
Relevant parties in favour of marriage equality:
- Grüne (green party): Long-time supporters, currently polling at ~8%
- Linke (left party): Pretty high support among voters, currently polling at ~9%
- SPD (mainstream center-left party): They have recently come around to put a heavy focus on marriage equality, used to be more like early Obama/Clinton. Currently polling at ~24%
- FDP (supposedly socially liberal, definitely fiscally conservative): Only ~60% support among voters, but leadership is in favour, currently polling at ~7%
Relevant parties opposed to marriage equality:
- CDU/CSU (christian democratic/social union parties, moderate conservatives, Merkel is CDU): Some of their MPs support marriage equality, but Merkel has so far opposed it, and they do whatever Merkel tells them to do. Polling at ~39%.
- AfD (conservative/alt-right party): "Family values, Mooslims, Refugess, OMG" blablabla, currently polling at ~8%.
The supporting parties have a majority in the Bundestag (parliament) at this time, but Merkel was put into power by a SPD/CDU/CSU coalition, and as long as she feels that marriage equality is wrong, the SPD MPs will not vote for it because that issue was agreed upon before forming the coalition.
The green party recently had their party convention to finish their program for the September 2017 elections. Green party leadship wanted to make it so their program is as CDU compatible as possible because they see a Green/CDU/CSU(/FDP?) coalition as their only way to power. One gay leader of the party, Volker Beck, crossed their plans though and put the issue of marriage equality to vote at their convention: He wants the Green party to reject any coalition that does not support marriage equality. The green base voted in favour of Becks program amendment.
News media and pundits ridiculed that change. They claimed that this might put the green party below 5% (required to get any seats in parliament), or at least prevent them from joining a coalition, because other issues like climate change and the refugee crisis are so much more important (and I agree, but it's not like opening marriage for gays takes a year of work in parliament – the bill is already waiting in comittee for almost 4 years).
So a few days later, FDP finally remembered that they want to be a socially liberal party. (The first openly gay foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle (RIP!), was an FDP party member.) And they copied the Greens' program amendment: Only coalitions that support marriage equality will be accepted. The FDP is the "usual" coalition partner for CDU/CSU if they reach a majority, so that is quite huge. News media and reader comments basically "WTF"'d because nobody saw that coming.
And now SPD did the same 2 days ago.
Yesterday, a major CDU politician said that they would accept marriage equality if that is required to form a coalition. Then Merkel joined in and said that maybe the Bundestag should vote on that issue without expecting MPs to vote according to party/coalition line (which is usually the case – all MPs just vote the way their party leaders in the administration ask them to, called "Fraktionszwang" / "Koalitionszwang", although is is obviously not a legally binding thing). Since quite a few CDU/CSU MPs support marriage equality, it is expected that such a vote would be successful.
It's not clear if there are plans to vote on this issue even before the September election. The last day in session appears to be this Friday, so it will probably take some more time.
So yeah. SURPRISE! 
And thanks to Volker Beck. 
= new reply since forum marked as read
So it looks like we went from Merkel's "it just doesn't feel right" to "yay, best wishes for your wedding!" in just 3 days or so.
Unless some CDU/CSU guys can talk the SPD out of their plans to force a vote. 
She, as well as the CSU party head Horst Seehofer, also said that they won't cancel the coalition agreement if SPD forces a vote. So that means CDU/CSU MPs are no longer expected to vote according to party line and some of them might vote for marriage equality. (Actually, this is something the party whip decides, since Merkel is executive branch and MPs are legislative branch, but since they're all CDU/CSU, they all follow Merkel's command basically.)
I haven't seen the SPD whip call it a "Gewissensentscheidung", so as of now, SPD MPs are probably expected to vote according to party line, i.e. vote in favour of marriage equality. Same for Grüne and Linke parties.
-> This should ensure that we have a majority for marriage equality!
The comittee where the bill is currently held will vote on it tomorrow, and the final Bundestag vote will probably take place on Thursday or Friday.
IT'S HAPPENING! 
So it's really happening. It's now >99% likely that the 2015 marriage equality bill will pass the Bundestag in less than 1 hour from now.
