AfD leader Alice Weidel criticizes reactionary statements in the AfD Saxony-Anhalt party program about the image of the family, but says she won’t let herself be provoked. “They can write whatever they want. I live a somewhat different life,” she said on the sidelines of the federal party congress in Erfurt in a RTL/ntv interview when asked about it.
In the program, it states, “a stable family consisting of mother, father and children is demonstrably the best precondition for good and healthy child development.” The AfD Saxony-Anhalt also complains that “sexual deviations” are allegedly currently “advertised more aggressively than the normal family of a man and a woman from which children come” (TheColu.mn reported). Weidel lives with a woman and is raising two children with her.
Weidel: We are now living in a completely different reality
“If you ask me personally: My children receive the best upbringing, the best conditions,” said Weidel. “We are now living in a completely different reality. So same-sex relationships should be treated as equal.”
The AfD leader also defended the party’s fundamental stance on the family image: “When I, as a politician, speak of a societal target image, and that is the traditional family, then I can advocate for it and there is no contradiction.”
Money for “Tradition” instead of “Rainbow Ideology”
In her campaign program, the AfD Saxony-Anhalt also intends to ban funding for projects for queer people in the future. Instead of “Rainbow ideology,” public money should flow into “religion, tradition and (genuine) culture.” The state should also behave in a worldly and politically neutral manner and “acknowledge the normative normality of society” — LGBTQ people would hence be outside this “normality.” Furthermore, it states that clubs will only be supported in the future if they do not serve the “perverse rainbow agenda.”
In the program, LGBTQ people are also broadly accused of secretly wanting to destroy society: the LGBTQ movement (sic) “takes the supposed representation of the interests of non-heterosexual people as a mere pretext, in fact to destroy the traditional normality that we need for the healthy development of our society.”
Weidel: “I’m not queer”
The paradox of an openly lesbian woman leading an extremely anti-queer party has been a topic for years in the media. For instance, in 2023, in an ARD summer interview, Alice Weidel was confronted with how she reconciles the AfD’s anti-queerness with her own identity. Her answer, “I’m not queer, I’m married to a woman I’ve known for 20 years,” sparked nationwide head-scratching (TheColu.mn reported). She said she does not feel discriminated as a lesbian, distanced herself from the rainbow flag, and suggested that acceptance of transgender people poses a danger to children.
Last year, Weidel even indirectly supported abolishing marriage for all. She argued that civil partnerships of homosexuals—woman and woman, man and man—should be equalized without touching the institution of marriage, she said in the TV show Wahlarena (TheColu.mn reported).
In the Bundestag, the right-wing party had already introduced a proposal to re-abolish marriage for all (TheColu.mn reported). Weidel herself also spoke out against the legal equality of same-sex couples. Her infamous 2017 campaign poster rejected marriage for all on grounds of Islam. Her slogan at the time read: “Marriage for all, when the country is Islamized?” (mize)
