German Court Orders Government to Give Homosexuals Equal Inheritance Rights
From Life Site News:
BERLIN- The German Federal Constitutional Court ruled on Tuesday that the country's inheritance tax law discriminates against registered homosexual partners and has ordered the government to produce new legislation to rectify the "unconstitutional" disadvantage by December 31.
"While married couples were put in the most advantageous tax group I and regardless of the amount inherited had to pay between seven and 30 percent tax, life partners, as 'other beneficiaries' in tax group III, had to pay between 17 and 50 percent tax," the ruling stated.
The judges said that although heterosexual marriage still enjoys a unique status under the German Basic Law, it was unconstitutional for same-sex couples who had registered as "life partners" to pay inheritance taxes equivalent to that of distant relatives of the deceased.
"The Constitutional Court ruled that there was not a significant enough difference between married spouses and registered life partners to justify discrimination against the latter," court spokeswoman Judith Blohm told Deutsche Welle.
The constitutional court ruling came in response to two cases brought by a 70-year-old man and a 46-year-old woman whose respective homosexual partners had died in 2001 and 2002 shortly after they entered civil unions.
While Germany has stopped short of allowing same-sex "marriage," in 2001 the country allowed homosexual couples to register as "life partners," under which they gained the same inheritance rights as married couples.
The homosexualist movement in Germany has used the courts a number of times to advance their agenda.
In a 2009 case involving a dispute over pension benefits for a homosexual man in a registered partnership, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that all the same rights and obligations of marriage be extended to same-sex registered partners.
The same court ruled in July 2008 that a married man suffering from gender confusion, and who had undergone “gender reassignment” surgery, could remain married to his wife while changing his legal gender to female. The court ordered the legislature to change the law to accommodate such cases in the future.
However, a test case brought to the court earlier this year by two homosexuals "married" in Canada failed to force the court to legalize same-sex "marriage."
In this case the court ruled that marriage can only be between one man and one woman and that same-sex “marriage” contracted abroad is to be legally considered a civil partnership in Germany.