Same-sex marriage will automatically become legal in Austria from 1 January 2019 following a ruling by the Austrian constitutional court of 12 October, despite Cardinal Christoph Schönborn’s recent appeal to the coalition government to try and find a solution that would retain the unique distinctiveness of marriage.
On 4 October, shortly before his departure for the Youth Synod in Rome, Schönborn told the Vienna church paper 'Der Sonntag' that he expected the governing coalition parties to once more conscientiously examine whether a non-discriminative solution could be found which at the same time retained the unique distinctiveness of marriage.
“I can well understand that for same-sex partners a legal partnership is too little. This wish for marriage is something very deep and actually a wonderful example of its (marriage’s) incomparability, but, however understandable this wish for marriage is, one must always bear in mind that marriage is decisive for procreation and the succession of generations and that is only possible in a union (“Verbindung”) between a man and a woman.”
The Austrian bishops’ conference has acknowledged the ruling.
“We hoped for a better solution, but must accept the fact the coalition government was not able to find one”, bishops’ conference secretary Peter Schipka told Kathpress on 13 October, in Schönborn’s absence. As the pressure for surrogate motherhood was now bound to rise, “the next challenge for the legislature is to achieve a prohibition of surrogacy in order to protect the dignity of women and children”, he underlined.
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