Germany still doesn't have same sex marriage? New leader of the free world my ass.
1. Americans made up that stupid title for themselves, no one thinks about "leader of the free world" besides Americans.
2. German society has been much more accepting than U.S concerning homosexuality for a very long time, really getting traction around the counter-culture era.
3. Gay marriage comes through the legislative process in Europe and other parts of the world, unlike it did in the U.S, and it had to have further protections by executive order IIRC.
4. Germany has much better protection laws concerning discrimination of LGBTQ as of now and for much longer than the U.S, especially for transgender people than most countries even where marriage is legal, such as issues concerning their healthcare.
5. Gay marriage is not a barometer for the life of LGBTQ people in a country. Another country I have stayed in, South Africa, has had full LGBTQ rights since the 90s, but it's not that great for LGBTQ people in general due to bad enforcement and general societal views. Views on LGBTQ in the U.S has only changed in very recent years and still are behind compared to countries that don't even have gay marriage like Germany.
Open queer artistic expression and gay lifestyle itself has been in some Germany cities, famously Berlin, since the 1920s. It never disappeared. It's among the greatest places to be for LGBTQ.
It's no excuse for no gay marriage, but it's really dumb to snub it off if you don't understand Germany. One of the reasons why it hasn't been done for so long is because of Merkel being in power for 12 years now, her own party has LGBTQ people in it, from memory I recall it's Jens Spahn. Most Germans by far are for it, and some have no opinion and don't care. I've rarely ever come across someone that is hostile towards LGBTQ in Germany, and I come from north east Germany as well. It mostly boils down to the CDU/CSU together, I know some other LGBTQ people that vote for CDU even, but the issue of lack of gay marriage in Germany isn't so much due to it being an issue of society or the people that vote for the CDU. It's kind of a weird and bizarre thing to explain.
Edit: As others have said later in this thread, even AfD the far-right party has no real official stance concerning LGBTQ last I checked, they even chose a lesbian candidate for their party for the election, Alice Weidel. It's just a bizarre thing all round when there is no actual anti-gay platform in any of the other parties except CSU in Bavaria concerning the issue of marriage itself in terms of Christian tradition, nor any significant anti-gay social movements that have a voice. The reason why a party like AfD doesn't have an anti-gay platform is because it makes no sense for them to because it won't get them any votes because there's no viable significant anti-gay sentiment in the population to get votes from.
