1968-1969: Germanies
Decriminalize Homosexuality
| After World War
II, Germany was divided into two separate countries,
communist East Germany and capitalist West Germany.
East Germany was the first to decriminalize homosexuality
when it struck down its anti-gay law, Paragraph
175, in 1968. West Germany followed in 1969 when
it revised ¶175 to permit homosexual relationships
between men over the age of 21.
Finally, after the two
Germanies were unified, ¶175 was
completely removed in 1994 and the age of consent was set
at 16, the same as the age of consent for heterosexual
sex.
|
Acknowledgement: Thanks to Dr. Hubert
Kennedy, author of Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl
Heinrich Ulrichs, Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement
and co-editor of Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi
Germany, for clarifying the sequence of events in the
abolition of ¶175.
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