In Aschaffenburg, the rainbow flag will no longer be raised on public buildings. It will not be displayed on municipal flagpoles this year, the city announced. The CSD Aschaffenburg is scheduled to take place in a week, on June 6.
The new mayor Markus Schlemmer (CSU) said: “Public buildings and central flagpoles stand, in my view, in a special way for the entire city and for all residents. Therefore I want to focus the official flag-raising practices on state, municipal, and other special sovereign occasions.”
The mayor insists he is not acting out of anti-queer hostility
That “explicitly” does not mean any distance from the queer community, according to a statement from Schlemmer. “On the contrary: I want queer life not to be marked as an exception, but to be respected as a natural part of our city society.” Visibility, for me, does not arise “only through flags, but also through concrete presence in public space, through events, encounters, a clear stance and protection from hostility.”
He also emphasized: “I will not let this decision push me into a corner or stigmatize me. Whoever infers from a cautious flag-raising practice a lack of appreciation for queer people is not faithful to my stance.”
In the previous year: Solidarity with Budapest Pride march
Schlemmer was elected as the city’s new mayor in March. In the previous year, the then-head of the town hall Jürgen Herzing (SPD) had deliberately allowed the rainbow flag to be raised — among other reasons, in solidarity with the Hungarian capital Budapest, as it was stated at the time. There Viktor Orbán, the now-ousted prime minister, had banned a Pride march, yet by the end of June numerous people still took to the streets of Budapest (TheColu.mn reported).
There were also controversies over the rainbow flag at the Berlin Reichstag: last year there was a dispute because Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (CDU) barred the raising of the rainbow flag for Berlin’s Pride. Her predecessor Bärbel Bas (SPD) had previously had no problem with the symbol of the queer community. Klöckner justified it with the neutrality principle. LGBTQ+ organizations criticized such rainbow-flag bans as particularly disheartening at a time when anti-queer violence is rising according to official statistics.
Bavaria is generally seen as a laggard on LGBTQ+ rights. As the only federal state, the Free State has not yet adopted an LGBTQ+ rights action plan. In total, 42 CSD events are scheduled there through September (TheColu.mn reported).
However, not all CSU members oppose the rainbow flag as a symbol in principle: for instance, State Parliament President Ilse Aigner (CSU) said last year that the rainbow flag stands “for very democratic values” — and allowed its display at the Bavarian Parliament for the Munich CSD (TheColu.mn reported).
