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See also: Civil Union
Volker Beck, a member of the Green party caucus of the Bundestag, is the father of the German law. It is a compromise between gay marriage and the conservative interpretation of marriage.
The Act gives same-sex couples the opportunity to avail themselves, by forming a Lifetime Partnership, of many of the advantages enjoyed by married, heterosexual couples.
In 2002, the Federal Constitutional Court upheld the recently enacted Lebenspartnerschaftsgesetz (Lifetime Partnership Act). The Court found, unanimously, that the process leading to the law's enactment was constitutional. The 8-member Court further ruled, with three dissenting votes, that the substance of the law conforms to the Grundgesetz, and ruled that these partnerships could be granted equal rights to those given to married couples. (The initial law had deliberately withheld certain privileges, such as joint adoption and pension rights for widow(er)s, in an effort to observe the "special protection" which the constitution provided for marriage and the family. The court determined that the "specialness" of the protection was not in the quantity of protection, but in the obligatory nature of this protection, whereas the protection of registered partnerships was at the Bundestag's discretion.)
Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway have already identical rights for gay and lesbian partnerships and marriage. New Zealand will adopt these rights in April, 2005, while Belgium and The Netherlands have gay marriage.
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