Despite a swift vote on marriage equality, German couples will have to register as a man and woman in order to get married.
In July, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier signed the marriage equality legislation a few weeks after the parliament voted in favour of the issue. The law reform gives same-sex couples full marital rights, and allows them to adopt children.
But thanks to a technical glitch, couples will still have to register as husband and wife when applying for a marriage license.
While same-sex couples will be able to be married from October, the software problem won’t be resolved until 1 November, 2018. The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the software developer are said to be working on the resolution.
According to a report in the Berliner Morgenpost the software issue was discovered to be a problem throughout Germany. The software cannot register two men or two women who want to marry, so one of the couple will be forced to register as the opposite gender.
Couples will still be able to marry from October.
Snap decision
German Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to put the issue of marriage equality up to a snap vote after meeting a lesbian couple who changed her mind.
‘I would like to steer the discussion more into the direction of a question-of-conscience vote rather than me forcing through [Parliament] a majority decision,’ Merkel said at the time.
Following the vote in June, German legal code now reads: ‘Marriage is entered into for life by two people of different or the same sex’.
