German 4 Dummies: Homo-Ehe or Homoehe

Mere days after Ireland came out of a referendum with a large Yes majority that will allow gay marriage, "conservative" Germans are upping their game of The Sky is Falling.

The Irish vote is considered a problem by those in Germany who want to have it both ways.
Yes, you may smile.

The problem faced by German conservatives is that many citizens are in favor of gay marriage and that Germany's constitutional court has been chipping away at treating gays differently from straight people. So, conservatives want to give gays more rights but not the right to simply marry.

In the heated exchange of arguments - which know by heart if you come from the U.S. and some other countries - the term Home-Ehe plays a pivotal role.

We use the hyphenated version for easy understanding of the term's origins. Homo is short for homosexuell (homosexual in English), and Ehe is marriage. While the new compound appears logical, there is a catch. The catch is that the neutral word "homosexuell" has been made into the noun "Homo", which on its own has been used as a derogatory term among the many even more pejorative terms in this Duden dictionary entry.

Little wonder then that many in the German LGBT community, as well as straight ass folks at the K-Landnews, do not like the term Homo-Ehe.

For that same reason, many in the camp of "classical marriage" kind of like the term, after all, you can appear reasonable and still convey negative emotions with admitting them.
They do have a point. The term Homo-Ehe is used across the main media outlets and across the mainstream political spectrum. And German being the language it is, there is no convenient, short, happy replacement a term more accurately and legally called gleichgeschlechtliche Ehe (German for same-sex marriage).

LGBT folks and their allies ask why there is any need to call it Homo-Ehe in the first place. If it is the same as any other marriage, you don't need to differentiate, do you?

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy Holidays by numbers: 420 and 175, where the 175 is the number German gays and lesbians used to pay attention to.