Not the end of the world after all! Instead of doomsday, 2012 mainly brought us revenants, at least from a gay perspective. All the headlines with gay content seemed so strangely familiar. Haven't I read that somewhere before? A list of topics that won't be leaving us alone any time soon.
The advertising trick with the naked skin
One of the oldest advertising tricks in the world still works reliably: Eroticism. In 2012, the American fashion company Abercrombie & Fitch used it to enhance their unimaginative hoodies with a few half-naked and - admittedly - very attractive young model salespeople. As a reward, there were photo spreads in tabloid newspapers, a critical Review in the taz and long queues outside the newly opened shops in Hamburg and Munich. If you're old enough, you might remember the 80s: back then, paunchy blokes gave Calvin Klein's staid underwear new magic. However, customers are now more ungrateful. The queues in front of the first Abercrombie & Fitch shop, which opened on Düsseldorf's Kö at the end of 2011, have already disappeared. Sales there also leave a lot to be desired, according to the industry magazine Textilwirtschaft. In the long run, even the most beautiful washboard bellies lose their elasticity.
The Eurovision Song Contest remains apolitical
Every year, the Pop Grand Prix aka Eurovision Song Contest delights the hearts of its gay fans. But this year in Baku, the sweet pop music had a bitter aftertaste - even though Loreen's winning song "Euphoria" a perfect CSD anthem. But host nation Azerbaijan used the music circus to present itself as cosmopolitan. Yet the Aliyev presidential family runs the oil state in an authoritarian manner. Local opposition members wanted to use the international attention to draw attention to human rights violations. They succeeded more badly than well. Nevertheless, an exciting discussion began among European ESC fans: how much room is there for serious politics at a cheerful pop festival? Even a Boycott was under discussion. The gay media journalist Stefan Niggemeier, himself a big ESC fan, has published on his bakublog.tv also reported on the unsavoury background to the ESC final. His conclusion: "It is disillusioning to what extent the ruling clique's calculations are working."
The CDU doesn't like homos
In 2012, the CDU wrote a never-ending story entitled "Equalisation of gay marriage". The climax was the rebellion of the "wild thirteen", a group of CDU members of the Bundestag. They called on their party to grant same-sex couples the same rights, including tax benefits, as well as the same obligations (here is the original demand). The CDU is still opposed to this. Because of the children. Even Chancellor Merkel, who otherwise avoids making any commitments, found clear words on the subjectShe wanted to maintain the unequal treatment "because our constitution sees marriage in direct connection with the family". Huh? But straight people get their tax benefits even if they don't have children. A marriage licence is enough. A gift! Such subtleties have never played a role in the endless homosexual debate among conservatives.
The tragic thing about the whole debate is that the gentle rebels only want to prevent their party from making a fool of itself at the Federal Constitutional Court. After all, the court also ruled reliably in favour of same-sex couples in 2012; only for the family allowance for civil servantsthen at the real estate transfer tax. But in this case, the otherwise statist CDU doesn't give a damn about the opinion of the guardians of the constitution: at the federal party conference in December, a clear majority voted against equal tax treatment for homosexual couples.
The gay professional footballer
One particularly persistent revenant is the gay professional footballer. A still active specimen is said to have been spotted in September. Surprisingly, it wasn't Bild that bagged the coveted stranger, but Fluter, the widely unknown youth magazine published by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Unfortunately, the luridly advertised interview did not include any names. "I would no longer be safe if my sexuality became public," explained the unknown man. The only strange thing is that despite the danger, almost all of his sports mates are supposed to know. "I don't know any player in the whole league who has a problem with it," the mystery man continued. "There are even some who ask with great interest." Readers ask themselves: Yes, why doesn't he come out if everyone is behind him? The Football magazine 11Freunde insinuated, among other things, that the gay pro in the Fluter was fictitious because of these breaks.
Whether real or not: the public seems ready for the Bundesliga coming-out. The Chancellor, DFB President and FC Bayern boss have taken a clear stance. Uli Hoeneß even promised"If someone came to us today and said he was gay, I would tell him: We can take this to the public together and then support it!" So all that remains is for a Bayern professional to come out and admit that he is gay!
The homo-hate preachers move on
Unfortunately, the hatred of homosexuals is also undying. Things had looked good in the autumn: Several gay organisations and personalities joined forces in the "Stop kreuz.net!" initiative against the fundamentalist Catholic portal. The portal had favoured incitement against gays - or, as it was mostly called there, against "homo-sodomites". The Bruno Gmünder publishing house, known for its Spartacus travel guide, pressed charges and promised a reward of 15,000 euros, martially named "bounty", for any relevant information. The sad reason for the campaign was the sudden death of jungle camp presenter Dirk Bach. On kreuz.net, authors and anonymous users had gloated over the fact that he was now languishing in "eternal homo hell".
The joint effort that the openly gay Theologian David Berger had unexpectedly quick success. kreuz.net was shut down on the first Advent. The ambivalent lesson from the successful campaign: even in Web 2.0, you don't have to accept every outburst of hatred. On the other hand, the fanatics quickly regroup. Similarly hateful comments can now be found in other Catholic forums, where the webmasters let them get away with it. "The fundamentalist mob moves on", summarised the Süddeutsche Zeitung at the end of the year.
The confirmed bachelor is back
The "confirmed bachelor" also gained new honours in 2012. Once upon a time, this was a term used to describe men who couldn't do anything with women. The fact that they were very much into men was concealed. Environment Minister Peter Altmaier outed himself in a photo home story with Bild am Sonntag in the summer As a die-hard 2.0: "The good Lord has arranged for me to go through life alone," revealed the man who is supposed to manage the energy transition for the Chancellor. There was also a photo of Altmaier sweating in front of home-made roast potatoes. Some gays were horrified by this commitment to abstaining from sex. "Is he possibly avoiding the topic of H ... and the bad sh ... word because he might not feel like being the first open H ... of his party to be a federal minister?" wrote Jan Feddersen in the taz newspaper - and was promptly told off by his lesbian editor-in-chief: Ines Pohl had Feddersen's comment removed from the web and apologised for the assumptions about his private life. An astonishing move for a left-wing newspaper that otherwise considers almost everything to be political. And it wasn't that private any more. After all, Altmaier had invited Bild, which is far less sensitive when it comes to privacy, into the inner sanctum: his kitchen.
Well-known, but always beautiful: coming out
And finally, in 2012, a year that seemed so familiar, there were two coming-outs that surprised everyone. The R'n'B star Frank Ocean used the release of his new album "Channel Orange" in the summer to come out. It was quite simple: he just had to explain to the journalists why he sings about "him" and not "her" in so many of his soulful ballads. Once that was out, the hip-hop world didn't come to an end, but the record shot up the itunes charts and Ocean's fellow rappers praised his openness. "Thank you, Frank Ocean", blogged Jay-Z and remarked: "I hope you hear and read the hundreds to thousands of voices that have your back." And also for the Boxer Orlando Cruz everything went well. After the 31-year-old Puerto Rican came out in October, he won an important fight a few weeks later. Hiphopper and boxer come out as gay? There you go! There was news in 2012 after all!
Always new: IWWIT 2012
The faces on ICH WEISS WAS ICH TU are always new. Florian from Augsburg was one of the new role models who appeared on the campaign website and live at CSDs in 2012. At the beginning of September, he reported in a video for the "Sex and Drugs" campaign week on why he uses drugs and what strategies he has to minimise risks. An important and controversial topic in the gay community, where drugs are often very common at parties. Reason enough for I KNOW WHAT I DO to address this topic openly and responsibly and to provide information. The debate on this controversial topic was correspondingly heated online. On Monday, the interview with Florian appeared on the Facebook page of ICH WEISS WAS ICH TUand when Florian went online on Tuesday morning, there were over 100 comments waiting for him. "The angry opponents of the campaign realised that the guy in the video was facing up to the issue," Florian reported proudly. "We had objective and constructive online conversations with many of them." Other focal points of ICH WEISS WAS ICH TU were for example, "getting older" and the vanishingly low viral load in therapy-positive patients - information that is still far too unknown and which Role model Franz to the market since December.
