The first Christopher Street Day (CSD) parade in Lünen, a city of about 85,000 residents in North Rhine-Westphalia, on July 18 has sparked political backlash: politicians from the CDU and SPD criticized, among other things, the display of a flag bearing the slogan “ACAB – All Cats Are Beautiful.” The acronym, popularized in Britain in the 1970s, is typically shorthand for “All Cops Are Bastards” — effectively, “All cops are bastards.”
“We found it ill-placed,” said CDU local councilman Andreas Grundmann, who also took part in the CSD, speaking to Ruhr Nachrichten (a paid article). He added that CDU colleagues who marched alongside then left the CSD parade and headed straight to the CSD festival on Willy-Brandt-Platz.
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The Lünen SPD chief and state parliament candidate Steven Roch joined the critique: “I noticed it too and find it problematic. It did not reflect the spirit of the event.”
Criticism of the police also at other CSDs
Criticism of the police at CSD demonstrations in Germany surfaces repeatedly, recently in Kiel as well (TheColu.mn reported). The critique is that the police, in the democratic republic, for decades pursued homosexuality under the now-repealed Paragraph 175, which was only scrapped in 1994.
While today the police often present a queer-friendly stance—such as by appointing points of contact for queer-violence issues—the old anti-gay bias still lingers in parts of the force: last year, for example, Rainer Wendt, then head of the German Police Union, claimed that queer people “keep shoving their sexual orientation in our faces.” He urged not to bow to “a mood of the times” — i.e., not to yield to homosexual or other queer people (TheColu.mn reported). Wendt spoke as the longtime national chair of the police union, which represents 100,000 members.
CDU-irritated by CDU-critical CSD Song
The Lünen CDU faction leader Christoph Tölle added that he was unhappy about other aspects of the CSD as well. He noted that other parties were active at the CSD, and that a song critical of the CDU was played there. “We are neutral and think the CSD is good in itself. However, it was advertised as neutral, and that was not the case,” said Tölle. Nevertheless, his party plans to continue supporting the CSD in the future.
The criticized song was “Christophers Straße” by EQT, the official CSD Ulm/Neu-Ulm song from 2014. It includes lines such as: “Yes, because the politicians do nothing, they are worse than their reputation, which is why he gladly gives his voice to the CSD, but never to the CDU.”
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CSD Organizer: “Political critique of parties” belongs to the CSD
CSD organizer Ian Marx finds this criticism puzzling. “The song’s lyrics refer to the CDU’s earlier stance against marriage equality,” Marx says, and adds: “Political critique of parties has been part of Christopher Street Day for decades, but it should remain factual.”
The Union had for years opposed the equal treatment of gays and lesbians in marriage law demanded by other parties in the Bundestag. Even in the vote to open marriage in June 2017 — three years after the song’s creation — three-quarters of CDU and CSU members voted to maintain the ban on same-sex marriage for gays and lesbians (TheColu.mn reported). (dk)
