‘I am gay and that is good’
Germany calls itself a liberal state. Nobody should be discriminated because of religion, colour of skin, gender or sexual orientation. That is what the constitution highlights in its first articles. And everybody should be able to live his values and beliefs as long as they are consistent with the constitution. After the WHO (World Health Organisation) deleted homosexuality from the list of psychological diseases in 1990 the gay-lesbian movement achieved a great success for the rights of homosexuals in Germany in 2001. The parliament implemented a law to strengthen homosexual partnerships. Nevertheless, though partners in a same-sex union have gained certain rights like to adopt children there are still decisive differences in terms of tax laws, civil service law and the law of succession. So there are still lacks of equal rights to be fought for in the next years.
Nowadays when a public person like a politician has his or her coming out in public, is probably not a scandal but still a big act. Two weeks ago Karin Wolff, Minister for culture and education in the German federal state Hesse, showed up with her girlfriend as the first high positioned female politician in Germany. The media complimented her on her braveness as she as a female politician especially when she is lesbian has a quite difficult status in public. Since Klaus Wowereit, mayor of Berlin and gay, stated: ‘I am gay and this is good (the way it is)’, before he was elected as Berlin´s mayor for the first time more and more politicians told about their homosexuality in public. As other famous examples one can mention the leader of the liberal party (Guido Westerwelle) and green politician Volker Beck who also fights for anti-discrimination against homosexuals in Russia.
As one of the most important happenings of the year regarding the gay-lesbian movement one can claim the Christopher Street Days when big parades, similar to the Love parade, take place in several German cities. These acts of celebration and demonstration shall remember the happenings around police razzia in New York Christopher Street when homosexuals rose up against their discrimination and fought the police for the first time. In Germany many politicians, of homosexual and heterosexual orientation, support CSD movement and therefore take over patronage of the parades just like Klaus Wowereit in Berlin. In Hamburg, where mayor Ole von Beust, who is also gay, led CSD parade this year famous drag queen Olivia Jones stated that although it becomes more and more normal to be lesbian or gay it is unfortunately still not normal enough. It is still a big scandal if gay politicians have their coming out. However it should be naturally at some time as it is also no scandal if someone says ‘I am heterosexual.’
However, the public reaction on Karin Wolffs step to the public showed how ‘normal’ it is nowadays to be gay. While it is quite accepted to be homosexual as an artist because gay men are seen as creative and having a good sense of taste - a positive prejudice- a homosexual politician still has to face major difficulties. On one hand it is seen as very positive if a politician has his or her coming out because it shows honesty to the voters and the politician therefore becomes more reliable and respectable. On the other hand one can find a difficult paradox here. As long as a politician is heterosexual one is not really interested in the sexual topic as a voter, unless there are some scandals, but the sexual orientation of a gay or lesbian politician will always be a topic after the coming out.
Voters expect that homosexual politicians deal with homosexual topics like the anti-discrimination rights of same-sex unions. Homosexuality becomes automatically a major part of their identification and somehow deprives them of a part of their private life. Karin Wolff for example, who is a former teacher of evangelic religion, claimed before her coming out that students should be taught in biology classes that there are apart from the evolutionary theory also other for example Christian theories about the origin of existence. Therefore, public discussed a lot how she can on hand highlight this attitude, which is normally presented by fundamentalist Christians like the creationists, when this belief seems on the other hand be opposing homosexual partnerships. It does not matter what political topic they are dealing with one will always search for a connection to their sexual orientation and critiques will always find some point to denigrate them. The only solution seems to be to integrate homosexuality in ones personality like for example Klaus Wowereit does. The Berlin mayor as a central figure of the gay movement is living his homosexuality quite open and in spite of this very famous and successful.
The question is how far this success is connected to Berlin which is known as a very liberal and tolerant part of Germany. When he was re-elected in 2006 some people thought about him as contender of Angela Merkel for chancellorship in the 2009 elections. Though the conservative opposition has not been able to denigrate Wowereit in terms of his sexual orientation in the last years it is a matter of common knowledge that homosexual politicians are seen as less representable on the highest level of politics. It is questionable if he can be successful as first gay chancellor after the first female chancellor. Too high are the barriers of prejudices in rural areas of Germany which are known as more conservative and often affected by religious values. At the end one can even assume that debates of last year about his possible chancellorship might have been an attack of his opponents to damage his political career. They might calculate that like often too early discussions lead to the neutralization of an successful politician – in this case Klaus Wowereit, Germany´s most famous gay politician. So despite the fact that the homosexual movement gained important successes in terms of rights and anti-discrimination the attitudes of people are in reality still affected a lot by prejudices. And because of this Klaus Wowereit will probably not convince voters and become Germany´s first gay chancellor. But we will see it.
