Mardi Gay

„Where did you meet?“, I once asked my friend and her new boyfriend. They were freshly in love and she was introducing him to our friends. „Oh, just on the internet, like everyone else,“ she said. How times have changed! When I was young, there was no such thing as the internet and meeting someone through a small ad in a newspaper was only for the desperate. The way I met the Best Husband in the World was certainly unusual by any standard, then or now: He and I ran across each other at Cologne’s gay pride parade.

Cologne Pride started as a small political demonstration organised by locals, called a „Christopher Street Day“. Today, according to the website Cologne Tourism, it’s the biggest pride event in Europe, with over 65,000 participants in the parade and 1.4 million visitors to the event as a whole in 2024.

The eponymous Christopher Street is a small street in New York’s West Village. On one of its street corners, in a building that was originally constructed as horse stables, there used to be a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn, founded in 1930 as a restaurant. In 1967, it became one of relatively few gay bars at the time. The bar was raided by police frequently, sometimes quite brutally, despite bribes that were paid.

The legal system and general attitude of society towards homosexuality were heavily anti-gay. Homosexuals were regarded as ‚perverts‘ suffering from a mental disorder; gay men and lesbians were considered a threat to national security. Sexual acts between same-sex partners were a criminal offense in the whole of the US until 1962, when the first state de-criminalised homosexuality. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were the last states to decriminalise homosexual acts as late as the 1980s. In other words, the gays who frequented the Stonwall Inn were deemed criminals suffering from a pathological disorder by lawmakers, and dangerous perverts by society.

This attitude gradually began changing with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, but in 1969, society was still miles away from being as tolerant as it is in the first world today. On June 28th, 1969, there was yet another raid on the Stonewall Inn – but this time, it went differently than expected. It resulted in riots on the street, fuelled by a new anti-war, equal-rights driven sentiment. The Stonewall Inn riots on Christopher Street are generally regarded as the birth date of the global LGBTQ+ movement.

Today, there are „Christopher Street Days“ and gay pride parades in many different cities – most of them in the more enlightened countries of the world, as they are often brutally dispersed in more backward, intolerant countries.

For me and the Best Husband in the World, showing up to protest for the rights of LGBTQ people is a sacred ritual. Firstly because, without them, we would never have met. But what’s more is that we truly believe that sexual discrimination and oppression are wrong, immoral, backward, and a human rights offense. It’s nobody else’s business what people want to do in their own bedroom as long as they have their partner’s consent. For us, attending Cologne Pride is a matter of giving a voice to the LGBTQ+ community in all those parts of the world where they are still being penalised or prosecuted for something that does no-one any harm. It’s a political statement.

So, like every year, we attended the parade in Cologne. It was colourful, fun, exuberant. But it was also a big carnival. It is tradition for the participants of the parade to proudly dress in drag, for example. But even spectators dress for the occasion, donning rainbow everything from socks to hats to rainbow-coloured body paint (and nothing (much) else). There are street stalls selling cheap souvenirs, food trucks and beer stands on the streets, and young families with children line the streets. Schoolchildren pose with the most over-the-top drag queens for photos, and kindergarden kids stand by with bags in which to collect the sweets that are being thrown from the floats. The trucks themselves are sponsored by big corporations as part of their corporate communication efforts – pink-washing at its best! At first, I was put off. „This is political. And serious“, I thought to myself. „There are still 70 countries in the world where homosexuality is a criminal offense, and many of those countries are not too far away. And even here, we still have a long way to go. How can they turn something so important into a massive fun fair?“

But returning home after the parade, I changed my mind. Isn’t it great that homosexuality has become so normal that families bring their kids along to watch the parade, and grannies in wheelchairs can be spotted cheering on the parade? Isn’t it great that couples can hold hands and kiss openly without fear of offending anyone? Isn’t it great that being gay-friendly is actually a marketing plus for a company? Even the Catholic Church – traditionally not exactly the most gay-friendly organisation in the world – participated in Cologne Pride. Certainly, this means that homosexuality has become so normal that even an organisation so conservative can openly advocate for gay rights. Perhaps the commercialisation of the event, its turning into a big party for everyone (gay or not gay) is actually THE perfect political message:

„Queer is the new normal. And now, join the fun.“