Guido Westerwelle (r.), German Minister of Foreign Affairs, and his soulmate, Michael Mronz.

Today, dear fellow gumbooteers, „I wanna take you to a gay bar, gay bar…“ And if you don’t like that song by Electric Six, you may as well stick to the good old Tipperary Song: „All the streets were paved with gold / so everyone was gay…“

Well, not quite – and of course it meant something different back then, when they first sung it in 1912. But today, in Germany, you might get that impression. Germany is gay. Or, to put it less bluntly: German society is at a peak when it comes to accepting things that would’ve been unspeakable 25 years ago. At least on the surface, but more on that later.

In times of a conservative government, a woman is chancellor (i.e. prime minister, talking about Angela Merkel of the conservatives here, of course), our Minister of Foreign Affairs, Guido Westerwelle (party: FDP, neoliberal), is gay, the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, is gay (party: SPD, socialist), as is Hamburg’s mayor, Ole von Beust (CDU, conservative).

What’s with the cities, you say? Well, Hamburg and Berlin are not just cities, they figure as states in the German federal construct. Hence, their governing protagonists also get nationwide air-time, and a lot of public attention.

Thus, it’s no wonder that the gay community in Germany rejoiced at Klaus Wowereit’s coming out in 2001, when he announced live on TV, while running for mayor of Berlin: “I am gay – and that is alright.” (“Ich bin schwul, und das ist auch gut so.”)

That sentence is a standing expression now in Germany, just insert whatever applies, e.g. “I am a Trekkie – and that is alright”.

But what does all that mean for the average gay man or woman living in Germany? Of course it’s easy for politicians to pull off such a publicity-stunt. Yet that doesn’t mean it works out the same for everyone else in their normal life.

Klaus Wowereit (r.) with boyfriend Joern Kubicki. No wonder the Berlin Bear dresses up in latex, just for the joy of it.

I ended up asking my old friend Thomas. He was once my sister’s boyfriend in the 80ies, before his coming out in the 90ies, long after they’d split up, and he’s lived quite a while now with his current boyfriend, though they are not married and don’t plan to move in together. “Well, for me, that would be easy, since I work in fashion, as a designer, but for my boyfriend – he works in an engineering job, a classic male environment. That might really complicate things, so he isn’t openly gay at work. We sort of keep that quiet on his end, although his mum and close friends know, no problem there.”

Gay couples are allowed to „marry“ in Germany since August 2001. Although it’s not strictly speaking a marriage, but something called “Lebenspartnerschaft“ („life partnership“, I reckon there’s something similar in Canada). The fact that it’s not a real marriage is thanks to the provinces ruled by the conservatives, they even tried to prevent the introduction of the „Lebenspartnerschaft“ – unsuccessfully, though!

But back to Thomas. Given the fact that the so-called “gay marriage” grants homosexual men and women with rights almost equal to a real marriage in Germany, with the exception that gay people may not adopt children (only kids of their partners from former hetero relationships) – what’s all the fuss about gay pride and gay rights, still?

Scene from Christopher Street Day-celebrations in Cologne, said to be the "German gay capital".

Well, you still need to stand up, because, frankly, educated circles may have outlawed the odd “queer-joke” as cocktail-entertainment at parties – but when it comes to some strata of German society, that is about it. In the East, with its strong foothold of rightwing groups and whole villages and small towns where the NPD, the neo-nazi party, is the main political force, being openly gay is as little recommendable as being black. Or Asian or whatever.

And once you get away from your academic, well educated people and their well-to-do backgrounds and meet simple “Mr. Man in the Street”, gays may again be observed with a watchful eye, even in the big urban hubs in Germany’s west.

Ole von Beust, mayor of Hamburg.

“Generally, there is a tendency that people who are not native Germans respond in not quite favourable ways about homosexuality”, explains Thomas. “Especially if you get people with an Islamic background and they notice you’re gay, encounters are often short of harassment, if not even openly hostile.” And one more thing struck me as odd: Thomas and other gay people I know tend to observe, that acceptance for gay life in Germany is greater with older people. Below 30, that drops. “Maybe that’s due to the fact that in times of greater economic pressure, minorities are always sought out as scapegoats.” That may be rushing to results – but yours truly, the author of this piece, does remember to have read in major German papers a few years ago that the demographic disaster of our ageing society could be ameliorated if more women refrained from careerism… and if less people were gay.

So there you go. Germany’s sort of gay. But we’re still a long way from the gay community being normal in the sense that “it’s nothing worth mentioning.” But at least, we’re on our way. Germany’s gay. And that is alright.

PS: Just as an aside – am I really the only straight man who’s a die-hard Pet Shop Boys-fan? Just wondering, because my wife keeps on teasing me about it…

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