The German high court ruled recently that gay people should be permitted to adopt a child that was already adopted by their partner. The court claimed that “successive adoption” as the practice is called, should no longer be banned because it violated the principle of equal treatment under the law. Already German law permits a gay or lesbian to adopt the biological child of their partner. Civil partnerships, but not marriage is permitted in Germany.
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is under pressure to change German law and permit equal rights for homosexuals including marriage, adoption and other legal rights the same as heterosexual couples. Germany continues to hold more conservative laws than other European nations such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, the UK, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. France plans to allow adoptions soon.
The ruling of the German Federal Constitutional Court applies to only a very small number of people, but its significance is the wider implications. While the court’s ruling didn’t address the full right to adoption for gay and lesbian couples, it points in that direction.
The conservative parties in Germany, such as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) – which are mostly Catholic, won’t give in to the liberal demands. They are being forced, however, to change their policies by the courts. Other legal challenges in favor of gay and lesbian rights are pending or being prepared.
But one liberal newspaper Der Tagesspiegel wrote: “For a child, nothing can replace a father and a mother. Not grandma and grandpa, not aunt and uncle, not the best nursery or all-day school, not the most perfect single parent — and also not two mothers or two fathers. They are great parents; the state and society owe them the support it gives heterosexuals. But no father can be mother to a child. Or vice versa.”
While the paper said that gay and lesbian couples should be given full rights to adopt children they also pointed out that such couples “should not be surprised if youth authorities tend to go on favoring giving children to married couples, given the same qualifications and suitability. That’s not an expression of a malicious homophobic ideology of a conservative-catholic alliance, but a pragmatic view of the best chances for a child.”
One nation after another is enacting laws and creating societies similar to Sodom. Jesus said that as it was in the days of Lot who lived in Sodom, so it would be in the last days before He comes the second time. See Luke 17:28-30.