A stamp in the register opens a back door
Five male couples marry in Toronto, and Israel refuses to register them. Then the Supreme Court puts its foot down.
On 21 November 2006, Israel's Supreme Court delivered a ruling whose effects are still felt today. Five Israeli male couples had married in Toronto. Back home, they wanted to be registered as married in the population register. The Ministry of the Interior refused.
The case has a special background. Israel has no civil marriage; people can only marry before a religious authority. Tens of thousands of heterosexual couples therefore go abroad, mostly to Cyprus, and are then registered without any problem. It was precisely on this practice that the petitioners relied. As early as the sixties, the court had held that the registration official was a mere statistician. He was not allowed to examine a genuine certificate for its legal validity.
The government countered that marriage between two men was not provided for in Israeli law, and that parliament would have to decide on it. By six votes to one, the court saw it differently: the official had exceeded his powers, and the marriages were to be registered. At the same time, the judges stressed strikingly often that they were not creating a new personal status. Justice Elyakim Rubinstein disagreed in his minority opinion. For the public, he argued, an entry in an ID card made no difference to recognition.
That was exactly where its explosive force lay. Formally, it was merely a statistical note, but in everyday life it meant an ID card with the entry "married". Some members of parliament promptly announced laws to override the ruling. Meanwhile, Yosi Ben-Ari and Laurent Schumann, the couple after whom the case is named, were planning a celebration.
A back door originally open to heterosexual couples now let gay and lesbian couples through as well. They still cannot marry in their own country today.