Right to identity: recognition / affiliation of people of the same sex; knowledge of the child's origins in adoption cases

The constitutional complaint concerned the question of whether a man-to-woman transsexual can be refused the establishment of a registered civil partnership with a woman with reference to the possibility of entering into marriage. For this, a change of civil status would have to have taken place, which presupposes that the transsexual is incapable of reproduction and has undergone gender-reassignment surgery.
The now 62-year-old complainant was born with male external sexual characteristics. However, she perceived herself as a member of the female sex. As such, she was homosexually oriented and lived in a partnership with a woman. In accordance with § 1 TSG , she has changed her male first name to a female first name. A change of the personal status (major solution) did not take place, since the necessary surgical interventions had not been made. Her application for registration of a civil partnership, filed together with her partner, was rejected by the registrar because this was only open to two participants of the same sex. The local court confirmed the decision with reference to the possibility of marriage. The appeals lodged against this before the regional court and the  higher regional court were unsuccessful. In the constitutional complaint filed in December 2007, the complainant alleged a violation of her right to sexual self-determination as part of her general right of personality.
The FCC held that it violated the general personality right from Article 2.1 in conjunction with Article 1.1 of the Basic Law in the expression of the right to sexual self-determination that transsexuals despite same-sex orientation had only the possibility of marriage as long as they did not create the conditions for a personal status recognition of the perceived gender by a gender-reconciling intervention.
The reference to the only possible marriage as an exclusively heterosexual union is not reasonable for transsexuals without gender reassignment insofar as they were thereby outwardly recognizably assigned to a gender to which they did not feel they belong. 
It was not constitutionally objectionable that the legislator judges the admissibility of such a registration on the basis of the sex under civil status law and makes this dependent on objectifiable conditions. But the legislative leeway was exceeded in an unreasonable manner with the unconditional and unexceptional requirement of gender reassignment and infertility in § 8 I No. 3, 4 TSG.
The firmness of the decision to change gender could not be judged solely on the basis of the extent of gender assimilation, but rather on the basis of the way of life. In addition, the right to sexual self-determination as well as to bodily integrity is to be given greater weight than the avoidance of the discrepancy between the legal gender assignment and the role of producer or bearer. The constitutional complaint was therefore well-founded.