Distance requirement (marriage)
With regard to the relationship between marriages and registered partnerships , some constitutional lawyers have postulated a distance requirement .
In Germany this was derived from Article 6 of the Basic Law , which prescribes special protection for marriage. Accordingly, some legal scholars concluded that the legal institution of the civil partnership should not be endowed with the same rights as a marriage. However, the theory of an alleged distance requirement was denied by the Federal Constitutional Court in a judgment of July 17, 2002, since the civil partnership is an “institute” “which addresses people who cannot enter into marriage”. Nevertheless, the term appears repeatedly in political discourse.
In its decision of July 7, 2009, the Federal Constitutional Court again ruled that a “distance requirement” does not exist, and also that Article 3 of the Basic Law (Equal Opportunities) must also be applied to registered partners.
Web links
- Response of the Rhineland-Palatinate state government (PDF; 8 kB) to a small request from Abg. Reiner Marz "Distance requirement to marriage?"
Individual evidence
- ↑ So also the Ministry of the Interior of Rhineland-Palatinate in the answer to a small question about the protection of marriage (PDF; 7 kB)
- ↑ http://www.bverfg.de/SharedDocs/Entscheidungen/DE/2002/07/fs20020717_1bvf000101.html
- ↑ Plenary minutes of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament (PDF; 659 kB), p. 4251, speech by Abg. Kohnle-Gros : "... the distance to marriage must be maintained. Article 6 of the Basic Law requires that."
- ↑ http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/rs20090707_1bvr116407.html