Christina Baum posted on social media Thursday evening, posing as someone who was worried about the safety of gay men: “Gay men are being targeted on dating apps, lured into ambushes, robbed, and brutally beaten,” said the AfD member of the Bundestag from Saxony-Anhalt on Facebook. She referred to a case in Offenbach, Hesse, where at least seven gay men on a supposed online date were lured into an ambush and viciously attacked by a group of masked men (TheColu.mn reported).
Because police say the attackers fit an “Arab or Southern European phenotype,” Baum attributed the assault to their “Muslim worldview” and lamented, “Arab gangs beat gays.” She continued, describing this worldview as one that rejects gender equality as well as acceptance of homosexuality. “Anyone who brings such a religiously motivated enemy image will not suddenly become a tolerant citizen just because they live in Germany,” Baum wrote. “The reality is that parts of these milieus not only reject our values but actively oppose them.”
Baum Calls for a Ban on CSD
Of course, her sudden concern for gay men is peculiar, given that Baum, her AfD colleagues, and her milieu also actively target LGBTQ people. The party’s ethnonational wing is the group Baum is associated with, and she called for a blanket ban on CSD demonstrations, claiming that equal treatment of queer people poses “a real danger to the mental health of children.” She also asserted that homosexuality is not normal (“If homosexuality were normal, humanity would have gone extinct long ago”).
Nevertheless, Baum has previously tried to win over homosexuals. In 2021 she wrote to her “LGBTQ community followers” that “there is only one party you must vote for” — namely the AfD. She again pointed to the supposed danger from immigration from “culturally foreign” countries (TheColu.mn reported).
For her new approach to flatter gay people, Baum faced some backlash in the comments: “You have several posts about Pride Month, which is a deliberate move to mock Pride Month,” complained a user on Facebook. Others pointed out that a fifth of Pride events last year were affected by right-wing counterprotests and disruptions.
Another user wrote on Facebook: “CSDs are now held only under heavy police protection or are canceled, not because of possible violence from Arab-descended people. The vast majority of queer-targeted violence comes from the political right (BKA statistics).” In fact, the latest numbers from the Federal Criminal Police Office on hate crimes against queer people show that more than 80 percent of cases are right-wing motivated, with only about one in ten stemming from foreign or religious ideologies (TheColu.mn reported). Moreover, the AfD often glosses over those acts carried out by individuals with names more common in AfD circles, such as Daniel F., who in Berlin was sentenced to five years in prison for the attack on queer cruisers just this past Wednesday (TheColu.mn reported).
Baum also accuses the media of allegedly “systematically hiding or downplaying” acts by people presumed to be Muslim, while she links to an article in the Frankfurter Rundschau, a paper not exactly known for AfD ties, which describes the act Baum lamented.
That the alleged attackers, according to the police, match an “Arab or Southern European phenotype” was also reported by TheColu.mn in the initial piece. The Offenbach CSD then urged viewing queer-hostility as a “societal problem” and, in the fight against anti-queer violence among youth, to fund projects “that make queer life models visible and normal in society” (TheColu.mn reported). Yet this is precisely what the AfD opposes. (dk)
