The Berlin branch of the Social Democratic Party’s youth wing has formally proposed abolishing marriage in Germany entirely \u2014 replacing it with “cohabitation partnerships” and demanding a constitutional amendment to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The motion, titled “Down with the patriarchy, even if it feels romantic,” was presented ahead of a Berlin SPD conference scheduled for May 8-9. According to the Berlin Young Socialists, known as the Jusos, marriage is a key institution of patriarchy that secures the “oppression of women by cis-men” and “restricts freedom and self-determination through its claim to permanence.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proposal argues that “marriage serves the chauvinistic, capitalist nation-state as an instrument for enforcing misogynistic, anti-queer, classist, and racist policies.” The motion calls for marriage to be replaced entirely with cohabiting partnerships stripped of any permanence claim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proposal presents a direct challenge to Article 6 of Germany’s Basic Law, which explicitly places marriage under constitutional protection. Any change would require a constitutional amendment \u2014 a high bar that the proposal itself acknowledges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Jusos’ motion is consistent with a broader SPD push against marriage-related protections. The party has separately been pressing to eliminate Germany’s spousal tax-splitting system \u2014 a mechanism the German Federal Constitutional Court has previously ruled is not a “tax benefit” but a constitutionally required element of appropriate taxation for married couples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Germany recorded one of Europe’s lowest fertility rates in 2024. A political party formally proposing to eliminate the constitutional institution most closely associated with stable family formation and child-rearing is making a statement about where its priorities lie \u2014 and it is not with demographic recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Berlin branch of the Social Democratic Party’s youth wing has formally proposed abolishing marriage in Germany entirely \u2014 replacing it with “cohabitation partnerships” and demanding a constitutional amendment to do so. The motion, titled “Down with the patriarchy, even if it feels romantic,” was presented ahead of a Berlin SPD conference scheduled for May […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":593,"featured_media":63551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[510],"tags":[911,4861,16713],"class_list":["post-276116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-family","tag-gender-ideology","tag-marriage-2"],"yoast_head":"\n