That's in fact false news.

[successful_try543@feddit.org]

That's in fact false news.

Correctiv.org (in German)

[geissi@feddit.org]

It is somewhat misleading but not false. He did vote against it as the linked article also points out.

English tl:dr for those interested:
He did vote for an earlier proposal that would have made marital rape illegal but allowed potential victims to block an investigation.
Critics feared that abusive spouses could force their victims to block investigations.
That proposal ultimately failed, a new version without "veto" was proposed, Merz voted against but it ultimately passed.

[don_alforno@feddit.org]

Oh, yeah, he voted for the earlier version in which an abusive husband could beat up his wife until she retracted her accusations. That totally absolves him. Not.

[barsoap@lemm.ee]

In addition to that martial rape could be, and was, prosecuted as coercion and bodily injury. Corporal punishment of spouses (which would be a way around that) was legalised in Prussia in 1794, then outlawed again in 1812, in Bavaria the span was from 1756 to 1900 (introduction of the BGB).

Still takes a very special kind of conservative to object to categorising it as rape, and that's the exact type of conservative Merz is.

The exact same reform btw also made the law gender-neutral. "Rape" doesn't exist as a thing in itself in German law, in a sense, it's a name given to a specific aggravation of sexual assault:

(6) In especially serious cases, the penalty is imprisonment for a term of at least two years. An especially serious case typically occurs where

1. the offender has sexual intercourse with the victim or has the victim have sexual intercourse or commits such similar sexual acts on the victim or has the victim commit them on them which are particularly degrading for the victim, especially if they involve penetration of the body (rape), or

2. the offence is committed jointly by more than one person.