Research On The Legal Protection Of Homosexual Rights In German Law And Its Reference To China

Homosexuality is a phenomenon which describes men or women of the same sex establishing a close relationship, or the self-identification of their sexual orientation.From ancient time till today, homosexual phenomena exist as a widespread social phenomenon in human society. However, in many societies, the dominant culture does not hold a friendly attitude towards the homosexual. This unfriendly attitude varies in each culture, in each period. It ranges from the exclusion of the homosexual in society to severe, brutal punishment such as death penalty and state-orchestrated systematic persecution.In modern times, the gay community, under the influence of new ideas brought forth by the increasingly diversified development of modern science and social culture,come to realize that they should not be deprived of their basic human rights just because of their sexual orientation. Therefore, they made a series of efforts to make their voices,in which they demand equal rights like any other group in society, heard.As a consequence of the efforts, issues concerning legal protection of gay rights began to appear in more and more Western countries and gained attention. Protecting rights of the homosexual has since then become a trend,which results in legislations.We can observe this trend by learning the situation in Germany. For a long period of time, the attitude towards the gay community is conservative. After the German reunification in 1871, the attitude was made clear by the Penal Code, in which homosexual behavior will be subject to severe penalties. In the 1940 s, the extreme ideology of the Nazi turn the hostility toward the gay community to the extreme:homosexuals under the Nazi regime was systematically persecuted and slaughtered.After the World War II, with the rise of social reflection of the extreme ideological and human rights movement across the world, Germany began to change its attitude andintroduced legislation to protect the rights of the gay community.In modern-day Germany, the homosexual enjoy relatively complete legal protection of their rights. German Law allows same-sex couples to register as "life partner relationship" and gives them the vast majority of personal and property rights based on heterosexual marriage relationship; at the same time, the law protects homosexuals against the unequal treatments based on their sexual orientation.Nevertheless, the situation of the homosexual rights protection is not optimistic in China. Prejudice, as a public opinion on the gay community, is still deeply rooted,which makes the protection of the gay rights lack social basis. From a legal point of view, when there is a dispute in same-sex cohabitation, or discrimination of an individual in social life, legal solutions or remedies are not able to be obtained by them.In the social basis, although from a historical perspective, China and Germany all have a mainstream culture which hold conservative attitudes towards the gay community.However, in our country, the gay community did not show positive attitude to strive for their own rights like their western counterparts, which makes the social basis and many obstacles in front of gay rights legislation remain unchanged in decades.The legislative process in Germany makes it clear that legal process of protecting the rights of the homosexual is a spiral process,and it should advance at the appropriate time. And the framework of the German legislation on same-sex partnership indicates that it is an art of compromise. The legislative process and the framework of the legislation in Germany are valuable experiences that we should keep researching in order to serve the future legislation in our country.