Queers’ (Un)Surprising Support for Right-Wing Parties in Germany and the United States

Denver Barrows

Amazon

Denver Barrows is a Senior Product Manager at Amazon scaling electric vehicle infrastructure. He is passionate about developing a transportation network built for a green economy and supplied by a revitalized industrial base. Previously, Denver worked at Amazon Air where he led business-wide readiness efforts and new product/policy due diligence. Prior to Amazon, he served in active duty and reserve roles in the Air Force with assignments/deployments in Germany, Syria, Puerto Rico, Texas, and California. He continues to serve in the Reserves.

Denver is an Atlantic Council Veteran Advanced Energy Project Fellow, has been recognized as a Center for New American Security Next Generation National Security Fellow, and Out in National Security’s Out Leadership List, where he is the Vice President for Operations. He was an AFROTC Distinguished Graduate at The University of Chicago where he earned a BA in Public Policy. Denver earned his MsC in Logistics from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Lea Nolte

SCHLAU - Braunschweig

Lea Nolte grew up on the coast of northern Germany. After high school and spending three years abroad, she studied Psychology (MSc) at the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. Her core topics are stress management and the mental health of employees. In addition to her studies, she has volunteered for the anti-discrimination project “SCHLAU,” which offers educational work on sexual orientation and gender identity through workshops for students. After moving to Hanover and starting a career, she is still active as a trainer and gives voluntary workshops at schools, as “SCHLAU” exists in several German cities. Attending seminars on sex & gender or racism-critical workshops, she likes to educate herself continuously, connect with people, and share stories. In addition to strengthening LGBTQ+ rights, animal protection is a topic close to her heart, and she is committed to volunteering in animal sanctuaries in Germany and abroad.

In politics, parties represent the interests of their constituents, and there is often a relationship between a person’s identity and their vote. In some cases, this seems consistent and in others, less plausible. One seemingly apparent contradiction is queer people who support right-wing parties. Queer people—members of the LGBTQ+ community—tend to stand for openness, tolerance, and diversity due to their own experiences of discrimination and inequality. By extension, it is assumed the queer community is a tight voting block of reliably liberal or leftist voters in Germany and the United States, excluded from the right due to its insistence on homogeneity and heteronormativity.

But, the diverse/similar dichotomy is ahistorical—there is a long history of queer people with leading roles in right-wing parties. The most extreme example is born from Hitler’s fascist rule, where in the 1930s gay men were active Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) members. A famous example is Ernst Röhm, head of the Sturmabteilung, SA, as well as other SA functionaries such as Helmuth Brückner. Röhm’s homosexuality was known and was apparently tolerated by Hitler until he had him and other gay party members murdered (“Röhm Putsch 1934”), marking a turning point for the radical NSDAP’s anti-gay movement.

In a traditional political context, the United States saw Marvin Liebman, Robert Bauman, and Michael Hess rise as prominent conservatives from the 1950s to the 1990s. While reports vary widely on whether GOP leaders—including President Reagan—knew they were gay, their work ranged from anti-communism efforts in the United States and internationally to congressional redistricting. These men hid their personal lives while working in visible leadership roles in the Republican Party and Republican administrations. Liebman and Bauman’s personal lives were later front-page news—Liebman with a very public coming out, Bauman with a very public scandal—that led to a much smaller role in the GOP than they had as closeted men. Sadly, Hess died of AIDS at the peak of the crisis while his party stood silent on the epidemic. Alongside their work, organizations like the Log Cabin Republicans (founded in 1977), became voices for LGBTQ+ people with conservative ideas.

Today, similar developments can be seen in the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) with Alice Weidel, their openly lesbian co-chair. In their party manifesto, they refer to LGBTQ+ people as “socially barely relevant constellations,” oppose “gender mania,” and want to reduce the rights of queer people, e.g., the rejection of gay marriage, gendering, or the Selbstbestimmungsgesetz (Self-Determination Law), which is a law intended to help transgender people define their gender identity on public documents in a simpler and more dignified way. In addition, the AfD desires censorship of queer representations in the media, reminiscent of the past. With this, queer support for the AfD seems especially surprising. According to a survey by the gay dating app Romeo and the magazine Männer, 22 percent of respondents said they would vote for the AfD in the 2024 European elections. Although this study, with 10,000 gay men, is not representative of the entire queer population, the results show tendencies of gay men to support right-wing politics. However, conflicting findings exist, as the study by Justus Liebig University Giessen on behalf of the Lesben- und Schwulenverband (Queer Diversity Association, LSVD+) shows that only the smallest group of the queer respondents (2.6 percent) would support the AfD.

Recently, being LGBTQ+ and a member of the GOP has not forced people into a life of duplicity like it did in the past. In 2016, while speaking at the Republican National Convention, tech billionaire Peter Thiel shared, “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican.” Simultaneously, the party’s national platform considered defending marriage between a man and woman to be “the foundation of a free society.” Thiel is certainly part of the minority, but he was not the only gay face in the Trump world–Richard Grenell served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020. Pew Research Center’s data from 2013 found that only 8 percent of LGTBQ+ adults identify as Republicans; as of 2024, that number is 12 percent. Alongside this increase is a 2024 GOP platform that makes no mention of gay marriage for the first time in decades. However, it does make clear that it “will keep men out of women’s sports, ban Taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition.” It is these policies that have driven Thiel’s fellow billionaire and transgender activist Jennifer Pritzker away from the Republican Party. After voting for Donald Trump in 2016 (and Republican presidential candidates in all but one election since 1972), Pritzker moved her support from the GOP following President Trump’s stance on transgender service members. Pritzker may not be alone in this sentiment given that 22 percent of queer people voted for Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. According to exit polls, only 12 percent of LGBTQ+ people voted for President Donald Trump in 2024, down considerably from the 2020 exit poll number of 27 percent.

Naturally, we are left wondering about the motives of these queer people, who stand as minorities in their own community. The theory of homonationalism could help explain some of the dynamics. In Germany, the AfD has seized upon a political appropriation that pits LGBTQ+ emancipation against an overgeneralized image of young migrants with a violent, anti-queer mindset.[1] The Theory of Social Identity[2] suggests that an ingroup is perceived as trustworthy and positive—nationalist Germans—while the outgroup—largely fundamentalist immigrant Muslims—are to be feared. The United States lacks a clear parallel; LGBTQ+ members openly supporting Trump certainly weren’t courted under the guise of protection. These LGBTQ+ GOP voters seem to anchor less on their queer identity in a political context, instead being drawn to the GOP by similar issues as their straight counterparts, perhaps the ingroup they gravitate toward.

Queer people have long been a part of and supported parties at odds with their LGBTQ+ identity. While we cannot draw a conclusion about the relationship between queer identity and politics, we do know that people of all sexual and gender identities like those who are similar to them—belonging is a psychological need.[3] Ultimately, future research should address the confines of what “similar” means, exploring whether political identity and queer identity exist as one construct that perhaps requires self-defense mechanisms to overcome inner conflicts, or whether these two identities can exist separately and in coexistence. It is a tangled connection that is most likely linked to one’s understanding of their own self-interest…just like every other voter.

[1] J.K. Puar, Terrorist assemblages: homonationalism in queer times (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).

[2] H. Tajfel and J.C. Turner, “The social identity theory of group behavior,” The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations 12 (1979), 33-47.

[3] E. L. Deci and R.M. Ryan, Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior (New York, NY: Plenum, 1985).

This article is part of the project “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany and the United States: Past, Present, and Future” and is generously funded by the Transatlantik-Programm der Bundesrepublik Deutschland aus Mitteln des European Recovery Program (ERP) des Bundesministeriums für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz(BMWK) (Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany with Funds through the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry for Economics and Climate Action (BMWK)).