Episode 126: Pride and Politics: The Complex Relationship between the LGBTIQ+ Community and Politics
Eric Langenbacher
Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Dr. Eric Langenbacher is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AICGS.
Dr. Langenbacher studied in Canada before completing his PhD in Georgetown University’s Government Department in 2002. His research interests include collective memory, political culture, and electoral politics in Germany and Europe. Recent publications include the edited volumes Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (2019), The Merkel Republic: The 2013 Bundestag Election and its Consequences (2015), Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (co-edited with Ruth Wittlinger and Bill Niven, 2013), Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations (co-edited with Yossi Shain, 2010), and From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic: Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification (co-edited with Jeffrey J. Anderson, 2010). With David Conradt, he is also the author of The German Polity, 10th and 11th edition (2013, 2017).
Dr. Langenbacher remains affiliated with Georgetown University as Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government. He has also taught at George Washington University, Washington College, The University of Navarre, and the Universidad Nacional de General San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has given talks across the world. He was selected Faculty Member of the Year by the School of Foreign Service in 2009 and was awarded a Fulbright grant in 1999-2000 and the Hopper Memorial Fellowship at Georgetown in 2000-2001. Since 2005, he has also been Managing Editor of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown’s BMW Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Langenbacher has also planned and run dozens of short programs for groups from abroad, as well as for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense on a variety of topics pertaining to American and comparative politics, business, culture, and public policy.
__
Jasmin Gräwel
Level4Films
Jasmin Gräwel grew up in Leipzig, Saxony. Currently, she works as a journalist for a tv production company in Leipzig called Level4Films. She produces tv reports for different magazines for public broadcasting and private tv channels. In january 2025 Gräwel finished her one year part-time online training as a diversity manager at the University of Hamburg. Gräwel studied American Studies at the University of Leipzig and completed a bachelor's degree in 2010.
Since 2018 Gräwel has volunteered as press officer, podcast host and member of the management board at Leipzig pride (CSD Leipzig). CSD Leipzig is the oldest pride organization in East Germany after Berlin. Gräwel also hosts a monthly podcast called “Inside CSD Leipzig”. On this podcast, Gräwel speaks with queer people in and around Leipzig, listening to their individual stories about coming out as queer, and sharing experiences as queer people with a wider audience.
Sarah Pope
LGBTQ+ Victory Institute
Sarah Pope is the Director of U.S. Programs at LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, overseeing Victory’s leadership development internships and fellowships, along with the annual International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference. Sarah started with Victory in 2018 as the U.S. Programs Manager, managing the day-to-day operations of Victory Institute’s Congressional programs. Prior to joining Victory, Sarah worked in youth leadership development and K-12 education within underserved environments. Sarah attended Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they earned their bachelor’s in sociology with a Spanish minor and their Master of Public Administration. A Maryland native, Sarah returned to the Washington, DC, area in 2017. In her free time, she can be found showing you pictures of her cat Birdie, making pottery, and telling you the latest reality TV show gossip.
The LGBTQ+ communities in Germany and the United States have been working toward greater legal rights, but laws and politicians in both countries have threatened to not only halt progress but take away already existing protections. Two participants from the AGI project “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany and the United States” join The Zeitgeist to discuss the current status of LGBTQ+ rights in each country, the relationship between the LGBTQ+ activists and politics, and the role of LGBTQ+ politicians.
Guest Host
Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Guests
Jasmin Gräwel, Journalist, Level4Films
Sarah Pope, Director of U.S. Programs, LGBTQ+ Victory Institute
Transcript
Eric Langenbacher
Welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Zeitgeist podcast here at the American-German Institute. I will be your host today; I’m Eric Langenbacher, a senior fellow and the director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AGI. The topic of today’s podcast is “Pride and Politics: The Complex Relationship between LGBTIQ+ Community and Politics.” We have two participants from our second year of our LGBTQ+ exchange program, and we have recently come back from a study tour in Munich. Back in September, we had traveled to New York City. And our two speakers are first Jazz Gräwel, who’s from Leipzig in eastern Germany, and she works as a journalist for a TV production company producing TV reports for public broadcasters as well as private TV channels. She’s also been very involved with Leipzig Pride, Christopher St. Day, and things like that. We also have Sarah Pope, who is the director of U.S. programs at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, based here in Washington, DC, where they oversee Victory’s leadership development, internships, and fellowships, along with annual international LGBTQ+ leaders’ conferences, and she’s been at the Victory Institute since 2018. So welcome to both of you.
Jasmin Gräwel
Thank you so much for having us.
Sarah Pope
Yeah. Thank you, Eric. Looking forward to the conversation.
Jasmin Gräwel
Yeah, me too.
Eric Langenbacher
I thought that we would start by talking about what’s at stake in both the U.S. and Germany in terms of queer rights. In particular, perhaps we should start with a description of the current state of affairs, the lay of the land, in terms of queer rights, and maybe Jazz we’ll start with you with some thoughts on the situation in Germany.
Jasmin Gräwel
Thank you so much for the introduction. In Germany, we face a lot of issues when it comes to maintaining queer rights we have achieved within the last 20-30 years. Right now, we have a new government in place and the new chancellor Friedrich Merz from the CDU, the Christian Democratic Party, and they are more in favor of more conservative values and issues and all of that. It’s going to be a challenge to keep up with pushing our ideas, our queer rights that we want to maintain, basically maintain them. This is going to be a challenge for us, how this is going to be like in the next four years or more. We face, in general, a shift toward more traditional values. We have more influence from people from the right-wing parties, and people are more in favor of pushing us back. We feel this on the streets—we, as queer activists like I am. I feel it when I’m outside, when I am involved in the organization of the Leipzig Pride. Not everyone is happy that we do this. So we will see how this is going to be like in the next years.
Eric Langenbacher
If I could just ask or make a follow-up comment really quickly, it’s interesting, it seems that in what you’re saying in Germany is that there has been a lot of progress made, but there are counter forces, counter pressures now, so it’s about defending the gains made. It reminds me of our discussion in Munich when we were all there together, and it was the Green Party speaker coming across as very conservative, the need to conserve the gains that have been made. We had quite the discussion amongst the participants about that, because the Green Party, which has been the most consistent and strongest advocate for queer rights over decades at this point, has always been a progressive, forward-looking force. And now it seems, very bizarrely, to have become a bit of a conservative force, at least in this regard. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Jasmin Gräwel
Yeah, I can agree to that. I think, as we already said in the introduction, it’s like maintaining the status quo, trying to keep what we already achieved. This is the main topic for us now and also politicians. It’s not like, OK, what are the issues we want to achieve? What’s next on our list? This is not the case. I think it’s really about what have we achieved, like the self-determination law, the ability for us in Germany to marry each other as queer people, Marriage Equality Act and all of that? For us, it’s to keep it safe and try not to lose it, basically.
Eric Langenbacher
Sarah, turning to you, your thoughts on the current state of affairs, the lay of the land, here in the United States?
Sarah Pope
It’s hard to know where to start. LGBTQ+ rights currently in the U.S. are under attack and have been under attack in the recent years, where we’re really facing this dilemma between public opinion, which is largely favorable towards LGBTQ+ folks and our rights, versus the laws and the folks that are holding elected office and what they’re trying to achieve. They really are trying to roll back any existing rights we have, really trying to dismantle a lot of the progress that’s been made. Within the last couple of days, the courts approved an executive order passed by the Trump administration saying that transgender service members no longer can serve in the military. So, thousands of folks are being pushed out of this career of service. As of a month ago, in the ACLU Tracker, they identify that there are 569 anti-LGBTQ+ bills currently being proposed in the U.S. This is across all levels of government, from city council up to the federal level. We’re really seeing this onslaught of attacks, and the majority of these attacks are going for those that are most vulnerable within our communities. So, these are generally attacks on the trans community, and we’re seeing that anti-equality folks are really looking to attack those that are most marginalized because they know that’s the path of least resistance. I think they are kind of testing the waters and saying, those that have the least number of folks speaking for them because there is a lack of understanding of trans folks still in the U.S., and folks are still at a place where once they know a trans person or know that they know a trans person—because everybody has met a trans person, they just may not be aware that they have—when folks do have these personal relationships, they immediately become much more supportive of legislation protecting folks, but where we stand in the U.S., there isn’t any kind of discrimination protections for folks against sexual orientation or gender identity, in eighteen states and four territories. So there isn’t any federal protection.
We’re really stuck in this conundrum of in the U.S., we have essentially two political parties that really decide what the landscape is going to look like. They can really be broken down to the party that generally is more toward equality and then the party that is more anti-equality. In this space, professionally, we identify them in those terms, because the organization that I work for is a nonpartisan organization, so generally we focus more on their equality and tracking those numbers. But on a personal level, in my own words, I’ll be identifying that it’s generally Democrats and Republicans, and the Democrats generally are aiming to preserve or trying their hardest to defend, whereas the Republicans are really the ones that are putting this onslaught, are really attacking LGBTQ+ rights in this country across all levels of government. We’re in this standstill of how much energy do you put into public opinion and trying to change hearts and minds, how much you put into just trying to protect basic legal protections? What would it look like to have a federal overarching protection that supersedes all local, state, and federal policy? But currently, given that we’re under a very anti-equality administration and the House and the Senate also are– it’s an unfriendly Congress in terms of LGBTQ+ equality. I don’t see that being something that’s going to happen till at least after the midterm elections that we have coming up in 2026.
Eric Langenbacher
What’s striking about the situation in the United States right now—according to me—is as you as you noted, I think you said eighteen states don’t have protections in place, so previously it would depend really on the state, the condition of equality for folks from the community. Now there also is this federal onslaught in many respects. One follow-up question would be to what degree do you think that the states that have invested in protections, to what degree can they push back on what’s coming from the federal government at this point?
Sarah Pope
That’s a tough question because in the U.S., we often hear states’ rights are really important for those that are anti-equality. They’re always pushing states’ rights when it’s a Democratic administration and they’re setting federal policy that is protective. But then, now that we’re in an anti-equality administration. They’re trying to interfere with the states’ rights and so it’s interesting that it’s clearly more, what works in my favor and I’m going to try to push for that, instead of kind of keeping the standard of, what is the state’s right, what is the federal right?
It’s tough because there are states like Illinois where we’re really seeing the governor and we’re seeing their legislature, they’re being very strong and saying we are going to adhere to this. We are not going to shift and take on any federal precedents as illegal. We’re seeing in Maine the fight right now that the governor is having with the U.S. president because he said he didn’t want any what he calls men in women’s sports. And what he’s talking about is the very few trans women that are in sports, and in this case, trans girls. They’re attacking public schools and children’s sports, and so we’re probably talking about maybe one or two people in the entire state of Maine. That’s not an exact figure, but really trying to hammer in the point through hyperbole that it’s very few people that we’re talking about. But the governor of Maine said I’m not going to ban young girls from participating in sports, and now the president is threatening pulling federal funding.
I really think of it as just these two heads kind of continuing to butt against each other and saying, what are our rights? How can we really uphold the idea that each state has their own rights? And then there is this federal precedence, so, on the personal level, when we have these really great laws that would supersede staying local ordinances and laws, like if the Equality Act had passed, would’ve been really fantastic, But then it is scary when there are these more sweeping mandates that are very anti LGBTQ+ and seeing how are they being challenged in the courts. But we’re also facing this issue right now where even if things are ruled unconstitutional or they’re ruled illegal in the courts, is the administration going to actually follow that anyway and follow the rule of law? We’re having this conversation during a particular point of chaos that things are changing every day. Right now I am glad to see so many states that are pro-LGBTQ+ equality. The states that are not these eighteen states, we do see them defending the rights of folks. We see them really challenging things or we see them pushing forward legislation that’s really proactive. The state of Minnesota, they have a really active LGBTQ+ caucus in their state legislature, and they’re pushing forward really great pro-equality legislation protecting their constituents, but that we keep seeing these court battles. It really feels like this back and forth. I’m imagining a tug of war where they’re really everyone’s pulling the rope and it’s going to be that continued challenge for the foreseeable future.
Eric Langenbacher
The next issue we wanted to discuss has to do with the influence of activists. The question is, what influence do queer activists and organizations have on politicians? Jazz, maybe we’ll turn to you.
Jasmin Gräwel
To answer in a short way, I think they have a great influence, and I think it’s important that activists are talking to politicians about what’s at stake, what are the needs we want to have fulfilled as a queer community.
I would like to talk a little bit more about organizations that are in favor of queer rights and have been in place for at least more than thirty years. For example, a very important organization we have in Germany is Human Rights, Diversity and Respect. In German, it’s called Bundesverband Queere Vielfalt LSVD, which was founded in the former GDR to be exact, in Leipzig, actually, under the name Schwulenverband. It was some activists, gay activists, in the former GDR in Leipzig came together and said, OK, we need to work on something, we need to do this together. And then after the Wall came down, it became an organization. They are very important to us. They do specific work. They have programs on the federal and state level to promote acceptance and diversity. There are legal and social recognitions of rainbow families; this is an issue for them. They talk about refugee policies to provide both protection and opportunity to persecuted LGBTQ people from all over the world who want or need to live in Germany. They have been a great source for many institutions and also politicians to learn more about queer people and their needs, and it’s always very close interaction, I have to say. And the LSVD has a headquarters, I think it’s in Cologne, and also in each state of Germany they have an office and are very supportive. What they are, what they have done—or let’s say achieved—is, for example, a milestone that they also put so much effort into this is the self-determination law that is now in place since last year. This is the latest milestone for the queer community. This law is in place now and it’s marked the end of the Transsexuellengesetz, which was a ruling for trans people. So now for trans folks, for example, it’s easy to declare if they want to change a name or want to officially be the gender that they are an official document, you only have to go to your local civil registry office, Standesamt, and have to make a simple declaration. This is so much easier now and so needed for trans people, because in the past with the Transsexuellengesetz, you had to have expert opinions, a lot of money was involved, you have to go to the court and all of this. It was a very discriminatory law and now it is much easier to declare who you are and who you want to be named as in official documents like your ID or whatever. The organization supported this very much so, and it’s now in place. The Marriage Equality Act, we’ve had since 2017. It’s been years and years of efforts to make this law happen that allows same-sex couples to marry. Also, with the help of organizations and also on a more, let’s say a more local level or city level, we have pride organizations supporting queer issues, especially during Pride Month, voluntary work is done all over the place. I think it’s very important to have organizations and people always in contact with politicians from different parties that are in supportive of queer rights.
Eric Langenbacher
If I may comment for a second, I know that the identification law came up in the election campaign that just took place in January and February, and I believe that the Christian Democrats had come out—certainly the Bavarians had come out—about repealing that legislation. You pointed out at the very beginning that there is a new government in Germany as of Tuesday, led by the Christian Democrats, but the junior coalition partner is the Social Democratic Party. And even though the Social Democrats have not been as supportive over the years of queer rights, I think that they will ensure that at least the worst will be averted, that the legislation will stand. It will not be repealed or anything like that.
Jasmin Gräwel
Yeah, I would like to mention the coalition has this coalition agreement, like a contract. The term “queer” is mentioned two times in this agreement, and they said they want to remain committed to protecting queer lives and queer rights from discrimination. Whatever sexual orientations you have, you have to live free from discrimination and violence is what they say in this agreement. I think it is a little supportive of queer people, so they want to maintain the self-determination law. So I hope that they’re going to keep to this, what they wrote down and this coalition agreement.
Eric Langenbacher
Yes, all right. Should we turn to the United States, Sarah?
Sarah Pope
I’m always envious when I hear of the multi-party system and the different coalitions that are built and how they really aim to protect certain rights and protections for citizens, just because we really have such a limitation here in the U.S. by having a two-party system where it really depends on who’s in charge at the moment. There are some areas that are just always going to be one party given the makeup of the area, the region, and the beliefs. And then, of course, if we want to dig into the the many layers of the American political system, then we get into gerrymandering and disenfranchisement of elections, and, of course, then it helps maintain the status quo of an anti-LGBTQ majority in a lot of areas, particularly in the South due to the Southern strategy and very clear, really strong planning by the conservatives, they were very smart in how they constructed this environment. They aren’t playing fair, but they did figure out a strategy that really worked. What I was thinking of as I was listening to Jazz speak of the different coalitions and how they’re able to protect different legislation, I was thinking about the importance of out LGBTQ+ elected officials and how they fit into this ecosystem, where there’s really an important role that activists play, advocacy organizations play, and elected officials play in tandem with one another. And then, of course, how everyone is kind of answering to the court of public opinion.
But before I dig into that, I was thinking of a couple of specific examples of, when it comes to LGBTQ+ elected officials, what role do they play in defending the rights that different activists and advocacy organizations are asking for? As I was hearing Jazz talk about the different parties working together, I was thinking about the case of a Texas state legislator. Her name is Mary Gonzalez, and she represents El Paso, TX, in the Texas state legislature. She’s part of the LGBTQ+ caucus that they newly formed within the past few years, and she is someone who is unapologetically queer and is very open about her identity and who she is. She’s also very personable. She grew up in Texas, really knows her community, and while she’s been in the legislature, she’s done a really fantastic job of getting to know the folks that are in the seats around her. So she’s connected with folks who maybe hold very diametric opinions, and she’s really built these relationships with them to the point that when they are voting against LGBTQ+ folks, they have to look her in the eye and say I’m voting against you. For many of these folks, she has kind of helped shift them a little bit more toward a progressive outlook where because they’ve gotten to know her and gotten to understand the community and the needs, it’s a lot harder for them to vote against marginalized communities, and many have shifted over the time that she’s been serving,
But then on the flip side, I’m thinking about another elected official who was sharing in confidence, so I’m not going to share their name, but they were talking about how even though they’ve gotten the folks around them to change their own opinions, they still are kind of answering to this public image of who they want to have donations from, of who their constituents are, where they’ve said I’m sorry, I can’t publicly support this pro-LGBTQ+ policy. It’s one of those things where it’s really tough to say, oh, I’m sorry, I can’t publicly support this because their private support is very different from their public support and then thinking that it’s consoling or that they’re providing some kind of consolation to say I’m sorry, as if that really impacts the overall outcome. So it’s a little bit of a dance when it comes to the elected officials that are holding this space.
But I tend to think that folks who are activists tend to make their best elected officials, because these are folks that are really in touch with their communities. They know the folks in the community, so if they run for office, they have really close relationships with a lot of the constituents or a lot of the influencing organizations. Folks who are really involved in mutual aid in the U.S. or really involved with local policy work or local activism, they tend to be the folks in a really good relationship with the churches that are kind of community hubs. They have really good relationships with the existing elected officials because they have to work together and talk about different policy issues. They really help set the platform where if folks in your community are saying we really need X, Y, and Z, and they’re coming to your office every day, you’re having these conversations, you’re getting these protests, the community is kind of on board with these individuals. It’s a lot harder as an elected official to say no. In the U.S., I would, say public opinion still does hold a lot of weight and has a strong bearing on how elected officials will vote generally because they want to get reelected. At the minute that they are elected into office, they tend to immediately start their reelection campaigns, and that does make it so that they are very much focused on if the community is pushing for something with such an outcry—and it does have to be a large majority—they will change their stances. We’re seeing that on the federal level when it comes to these town halls where folks are really protesting a lot of the different tax policies or they’re really sharing their disapproval of how the current administration is running different federal agencies, things like that. Not as quickly as we would like to see, we are seeing that you know our elected representatives are listening to activist voices. Particularly in LGBTQ+ spaces, I think that’s important because without activists, we wouldn’t have marriage equality. Without activists, we wouldn’t have these state protections. These state protections often come out of harm that’s been put toward the community. I think it’s really important to have these relationships with activists because they’re the folks that really know what’s happening within communities, so they act as a voice for the community to elected officials, so I think it’s really important that there are these relationships and that they exist with one another. I also do think it’s very important that we have folks from within marginalized communities in elected spaces as speakers for these experiences.
Eric Langenbacher
Well, that already answers the the last question I was going to pose to you about whether the community still needs politicians, but it seems like especially in the environment in Germany and the United States that whether the politicians are proactively helping the community or defending the gains already made that their role is going to be crucial going forward.
We’re rapidly coming to the end of our time, so I thought I might pose one more thought and then hear both of your final thoughts on the whole thing. One of the things that strikes me is, so many of the protections in the United States seem to be based on legal precedents. I’m thinking of Lawrence v. Texas going back to 2003, Obergefell v. Hodges back in 2015, whereas in Germany—I don’t know if it’s thankfully or not—but in Germany it seems that so many of the rights are based on legislation that has been duly enacted. I don’t know if there’s ever been a court test, because sometimes there are, but not like in the United States. It strikes me as a very interesting contrast. My question would be, does that mean that the gains are more fragile in the United States compared to Germany, because it is easier oftentimes to overturn a precedent, as we saw the Supreme Court did when they overturned Roe v. Wade? First to Sarah, do you worry that some of the foundations for the community’s rights are in trouble in the United States, and how can the community prevent that from happening? How would the community respond if that did happen?
Sarah Pope
You brought up Roe v. Wade, which I think was really when it became apparent how fragile our court system is. Had you asked me pre-the overturning of Roe, I would have said the courts are pretty solid, legal precedence doesn’t often get overturned. But we saw that that was not the case, that they will find cracks in the system and use them to their advantage. Despite the right to privacy, which Roe v. Wade, a lot of folks don’t know, is more about the right to privacy versus the right to abortion. And then the right to abortion falls within the right to privacy, that you have the right to do whatever medical care you think is necessary, that you have the right to private actions however you see fit. So the right to privacy fits really strongly into LGBTQ+ equality as well, not just in that LGBTQ+ folks are also impacted by the implications of taking away the right to abortion at the federal level. Their reasoning was that it should be at the states’ discretion—bringing up that question again of states’ rights. I would say we’re at a really fragile place where, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of the Trump administration’s actions are being challenged by courts, but then are the court mandates actually being followed, is a concern and a question that we have. That is why it’s so important to have out LGBTQ+ folks in the legislature, because in areas where there is anti-LGBTQ legislation being proposed constantly in these states where there are those 550 bills proposed currently against the LGBTQ+ community, the majority of these are in unfriendly areas, but they’re also in friendly areas in friendly states. There’s legislation that’s been proposed in Maryland, which is a traditionally blue state—and blue for the U.S. is our progressive color; red is our conservative color, which I think we’re probably one of the few countries that it is that case. In these safe blue areas, you still have parts of the states that are a little bit more conservative, so it’s important to have folks in the legislature that are defending and there to say no, we’re not going to vote for this. On the flip side, in areas that are really friendly—I referenced Minnesota earlier because they’ve had such a, I’ve thought of them as being on the offense when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights, that they’re thinking multiple steps ahead to protect and codify through legislation protections—it’s really important as well to have LGBTQ+ folks there thinking about what are the areas in which we need to be protecting folks.
As it stands in the U.S. right now, LGBTQ+ folks are very underrepresented in terms of elected official representation. Working off of the very conservative number that 7 percent of Americans are LGBTQ+, which we know 20 percent of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+, millennials are higher than that 7 percent. But putting together all the generations and going with that very conservative figure of 7 percent, still 0.26 percent of elected officials are LGBTQ+. When we’re looking at representation, we need tens of thousands more folks in elected office across all levels to have full parity and representation of our community. Right now, we have 1,336 out LGBTQ+ elected officials nationwide, and this is the highest number of out LGBTQ+ elected officials we’ve ever had. But given the size of the United States, knowing that only 1,336 out LGBTQ folks are serving in elected office, that really, really small percentage of representation means that a lot of our needs are not being advocated for in the same way. Allies play a very important role. That again brings up the importance of activists putting this on the plates of allies or folks building those personal relationships that we really have these strong allies. But we really need out LGBTQ folks in elected office because they are not just there to defend against anti-LGBTQ policies or advanced LGBTQ+ rights. But these are the folks that are actually going to meet with the activists and really take in the perspectives of the community. They’re also really going to be there to humanize LGBTQ+ people, so bringing it back to that example I was sharing of Representative Mary Gonzalez. She’s the type of person who is able to build these relationships and start to get folks to slowly change their opinions. It’s not perfect. They’re not going to vote with us 100 percent of the time. But even knowing that one bill maybe is not going to be advanced because of these conversations and these relationships that are built, it’s important progress. I would like to see things a lot further. I am definitely nervous about how the court system has been working recently in the U.S. and our systems of checks and balances, how that’s going to really fare. But I do think now proves more than ever the importance of having LGBTQ+ representation in political office. Of course, there are pitfalls and focusing just on one part of someone’s identity. On a personal level, I’m not going to vote for someone just because they are LGBTQ+, they have to of course align with my other beliefs and be for other causes because there can be folks that are LGBTQ+, but then also hold racist ideology. I wouldn’t vote for someone like that. I’m not going to vote just on the basis of identity. But people are able to advocate for issues that you may not see if you don’t experience them. There’s this common phrase that we use in U.S. politics in the representation space where we say you can’t be what you can’t see. It’s important for folks to see their futures and to know that they can advocate for their communities and that there are going to be rights and advancements. Because it was Shirley Chisholm who was the first person to say this, that if you aren’t at the table, you’re on the menu. That’s really the case with the LGBTQ community. If we’re not there to defend ourselves, then we’re going to be on the chopping block, and we’re already seeing that because we don’t have the strong representation in government. We’re one of the biggest focus, they’re going for the communities that are the most marginalized within the U.S. right now and it’s important to have folks that are really standing up for us and advocating for our needs.
Eric Langenbacher
It’s very interesting when you said that you don’t necessarily vote for somebody just because they’re a member of the community. That’s an excellent transition to some final thoughts from Jazz because one of the most prominent politicians in Germany, Alice Weidel, is a member of the community—I don’t know how she self-identifies—of course, presiding over the Alternative for Germany, which is hostile to queer rights. So Jazz, your final thoughts?
Jasmin Gräwel
I was thinking about bringing up this example of Alice Weidel from the Alternative for Germany. She identifies as a lesbian. She is not queer, and she happens to be with a woman she’s known for twenty years and is married. I think that’s about correctly what she’s said. When it comes to lesbian visibility, which is an issue, she is, you know, thumbs up. But when it comes to being more than just a member of the LGBTQ+ community, we’ll she’s not the one to be supported by a lot of people, because the Alternative für Deutschland supports more conservative ideas and traditional family values and all of that. I think there’s more to that than just being part of the LGBTQ+ community. As Sarah already mentioned, visibility is an issue and I think it is very important that we have out and proud politicians in the party system, so we can see what is possible, how they can support the issues that are at stake for us queer people and also experience for themselves.
Another thing that comes to mind as I already mentioned it is important to be visible as an elected official in the party system and to be seen, to be visible, to see being queer and being a politician is something that is not exceptional; it’s just a part of your identity that you are queer. I think we as the queer community, especially queer activists, we need to keep in touch with the politicians. We need to keep talking to them, we need to have the opportunity to meet them at pride events and get in touch, get to know them, tell them, this is what we need, this is what we want, how can you help us? And even if it’s someone from a more conservative party like to Christian Democrats, the CDU, even go to them and say, OK, why are you not supportive? What else can you do in order to help us? It is also a good way to exchange ideas and support. So I think politicians need to be in touch with us.
Eric Langenbacher
Well, on that note, our time has come to an end. I would like to thank Sarah and Jazz for sharing their insights today. And I would like to also thank all of the listeners to this episode of The Zeitgeist.
This podcast 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)).
