A gay couple that was seeking to open a restaurant near the Bavarian town of Freying received an anonymous letter early last year. "Stay away. We don't need people like you here," it read. Additional threats followed, including a faked obituary and an open, though anonymous, letter claiming that one of the two was HIV-positive and that there was a danger that diners could be infected. The restaurant was never opened.
Can a story like be really be true? In Germany of all places, a country that was last week enraptured by the coming out of former professional footballer Thomas Hitzlsperger and where it seemed like the entire country supported him?
Hitzlsperger made his announcement in the influential weekly Die Zeit, unleashing a tidal wave of media backing. "Respect" blared the left-wing Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung. Its conservative counterpart Bild chose the exact same headline, marking one of the very few times when the two publications have concurred. Everyone in the country seemed to be in agreement when it came to Hitzlsperger's courageous step.
Yet the jubilation was so great that it at times seemed a bit too much for the occasion. A former football player came out. Is that really such a monumental event? Of course its progress when it is made clear that homosexuality exists in the world of football as well. No player the caliber of Hitzlsperger had thus far gone public with his homosexuality.
But the rejoicing sounded suspiciously self-serving and smug: "We are so amazingly liberal that we can even get excited about a gay professional football player," the message seemed to be. "Germany is so much better than Russia, where homosexuals are openly discriminated against, and superior to France, where hundreds of thousands take to the streets to protest gay marriage."
One could almost feel the relief at the fact that the positive reaction to Hitzlsperger's announcement was large enough to cover up the normal hostilities, clichés, stereotypes and discrimination against gays that exist in Germany. But they were there. Even as Bild pronounced its "respect" for Hitzlsperger, the paper's columnist Franz Josef Wagner wrote in an open letter to the former German national team player: "Nobody thought that you are gay. You were athletic, a power-player." The prejudice was clear, even as it was hidden behind the admiration. » | Anna Kistner, Dirk Kurbjuweit, Ann-Katrin Müller and Simone Salden | Monday, January 13, 2014
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