Abstract

German human rights campaigner Karl Heinrich Ulrichs advocated for same-sex marriage in the nineteenth century. Over a century later, we still have a long way to go. Arguing before his time, he took the Church, both Catholic and Protestant, head on. Ulrichs’s insights seem to have been all but forgotten. No one, to my knowledge, has invoked Ulrichs in contemporary debates about same-sex marriage, and yet he expertly diagnosed the problem and proposed a solution: start with the Church. In this paper, I resurrect his insights, and strengthen his case, for same-sex marriage.