Same-Gender Parenting and the Best Interests of the Child: The European Perspective with the Example of Austria

同性養育和孩子的最大利益：以奧地利為例的歐洲觀點

奧地利與臺灣一樣，是通過憲法法院的判決來開放同性夫婦間之婚姻，但這也與其他歐洲國家有所不同。與臺灣不同的是，奧地利在養育子女（另一半收養、共同收養和自動視為父母機制等方面）方面也實現了平等，因為其憲法法院是以每個孩子的最大利益為核心論點。本文介紹了奧地利，這個曾經是世界上第一個廢除同性戀接觸者需判處死刑的國家，後來又是最後一個取消對同性戀刑事起訴的國家，如何為了實現同性和異性在家庭法中的完全平等而進行改革。本文並詳細闡述了兒童權利在這個過程中為何變得至關重要。

Austria, like Taiwan, but unlike all the other European countries, opened up marriage to same-gender couples by way of a Constitutional Court’s judgment. Different from Taiwan, Austria realized equality also in parenting (second-parent adoption, joint adoption, and automatic co-parenthood) with the Constitutional Court’s core argument of the best interests of each individual child. This article presents how Austria, once the first country in the world to repeal the death penalty for homosexual contact and later on one of the last to remove its criminal prosecution, paved the way to full family law equality for same-gender and opposite-gender couples, and elaborates how children’s rights turned out to be crucial in this process.