A lesbian couple who inspired Angela Merkel to soften her opposition to same-sex marriage have said they will invite the German chancellor to their wedding if a bill to legalise the ceremony is passed on Friday.



A free vote is expected to take place in the Bundestag on Friday, a day before the summer recess after being hurriedly put on the parliamentary agenda on Wednesday by the Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s junior coalition partners. The SPD said last weekend that an agreement on same-sex marriage would be a central condition to any future coalition.



The bill is widely expected to pass as it is backed by most parties and Merkel has told lawmakers of her centre-right party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), that they can vote according to their conscience.



“The path to equality is open,” tweeted Renate Künast, head of the Greens in the Bundestag, on Wednesday.

The proposed legislation would grant full marital rights – including the possibility to jointly adopt children – to same-sex couples, who in Germany are now only able to enter civil partnerships.

The vote comes after Merkel softened her stance on gay marriage at a Berlin debate on Monday night. In a live question-and-answer session organised by the magazine Brigitte, she said a personal encounter with Gundula Zilm and her partner in the chancellor’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern constituency had helped change her mind after years of feeling conflicted over the issue.

“I had a life-changing experience in my home constituency,” Merkel told the audience. She said she had confided in “a lesbian constituent” that her personal “sticking point” on gay marriage was the “welfare of children”.

Merkel said Zilm, who had fostered children from troubled homes for years with her partner, had responded: “‘I tell you what, come and visit me in my home, where I live with my lesbian partner and eight foster children. The foster children have been with us for a long time, and I think they’re doing well.’” Merkel said she had not yet taken Zilm up on her invitation but hoped to do so.



The German chancellor told the Q&A session: “When the state has decided a child is much better off … in a same sex partnership, than they are staying with a violent mother and father … then I have to acknowledge that positively and include it in my judgment.”

Reacting to Merkel’s words, Zilm said she and her partner Christine were “happy to know that this decision might be down to us”. Recalling her encounter with Merkel in the marketplace in the town of Barth, Christine Zilm told the newspaper Ostsee-Zeitung: “I told her I didn’t want us in this century to still be thinking in a medieval way.”



Zilm said she had appealed to Merkel to change the law, “because why shouldn’t same-sex couples bring up kids? To be gay or lesbian isn’t contagious, and the children grow up and go their own way … It’s nice to know she remembered us.”

Merkel said she was in favour of “a decision of conscience” and preferred a free vote because the issue was “a really personal matter”.

Some conservatives from within the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, have signalled that they may try to block the vote.

Merkel’s comments sparked a heated debate on social media, and prompted the hashtag #Ehefüralle (marriage for all) to trend on Twitter.

Germany was one of the first European countries to legalise same-sex partnerships in 2001 under a SPD-Greens government. But since 2005, Merkel’s CDU-led government has refused repeatedly to legalise gay marriage owing to strong opposition from the conservative alliance’s right wing, despite granting same-sex couples full marital rights, including the right to adopt.

Other countries across Europe have already legalised gay marriage, including Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, except for Northern Ireland.

Merkel said she did not want the question to be politicised, particularly before parliamentary elections in September. But if the bill is passed, her conservatives will be able to take credit for it, despite having opposed the motion for years while the opposition SPD, Greens and pro-business liberals have strongly pushed for it. About two-thirds of Germans are believed to support the legislation.



Already in a civil partnership, the Zilms said they will marry when it is legal. “And Angela Merkel will get an invitation to the wedding,” they told the Ostsee-Zeitung.