Queer Politics In The Weimar Republic Of Germany: Sound Familiar?

originally in The Huffington  Post

note: This review (in a modified form) will air on this week’s This Way Out, the international LGBT news syndicate based in Los Angeles.  To listen to the program, click here..

Just the other day, I was talking to a historian friend about a conversation she had with a lesbian friend who announced that she wasn’t voting. The friend told her that we’ll just have four years of Trump. This gave me pause. I know more than a few people who have announced they’re not voting. What these people, who call themselves progressives, have in common, is that they are white, mostly economically privileged (but not all of them), and straight.

Of course, I tried to talk some sense into them. But with each one, I was left frustrated and came to the conclusion that they are in denial. Even if they are white and economically privileged and straight, history can change on a dime and their lives will be changed also.

When I heard about Queer Identities and Politics in Germany, A History 1880-1945, by Clayton J. Whisnant (Harrington Park Press; 2016), I was immediately interested. It’s not an easy book to read. The first night I started reading it, I kept dreaming that the United States was sliding toward fascism. Then when I woke up I thought about the presidential election. I guess it’s safe to say that the book got under my skin and that it was published at exactly the right time.

The Weimer Republic and the openly gay culture in Berlin was embedded in my LGBT encoded memory. Whisnant writes about the “homosexual movement” launched in Germany in the 1890s and its various factions (and its scandals and political movements) that led up to the openness of the Weimer Republic in the 1920s.

The author recounts that in the heyday of the Weimar Republic, there were between 90 and 100 gay bars in Berlin frequented by gay men and lesbians. There we also many thriving publications for gay men and lesbians. I found it interesting that the lesbian publications addressed trans issues.

As open as it was, the Weimar Republic was far from being a utopia for LGBTQ people. There were anti-gay laws on the books but German police officers, for the most part, turned a blind eye to the bars. This is more than can be said for U.S. police conduct, before Stonewall when patrons were routinely rounded up, arrested and their names published in the papers (ruining careers and severing family ties).

The author writes about Christopher Isherwood, a prominent foreigner who frequented the sexual underworld of Berlin. Isherwood wrote a series of short stories — The Berlin Stories — which inspired the Broadway musical and the award-winning film Cabaret.

The book also chronicles the downfall of the Wiemar Republic.

This includes the rise of censorship laws that targeted gay and lesbian publications. The book also addresses infighting and factions in the “homosexual movement,” including the “masculinist” faction that abhorred anything feminine or feminist. Ultimately, many of the “masculinist” gay men joined the Nazi Party and were put in concentration camps and exterminated.

Things changed almost overnight. As the author writes:

“In 1930 the Nazi Party won a staggering victory in the federal elections: overnight it grew from a small fringe party with only twelve seats in the Reichstag to become the second most powerful political party in the land. Homosexual activists recognized that they were in trouble.”

The book also chronicles the persecution of gay men and lesbians in the camps and concludes with “Gay and Lesbian Life after 1945.”

Suffice to say that it took decades to repair the damage. Now, as well as historically, is not a time for skepticism, sarcasm or inaction.

There is a lot at stake in the upcoming election:

Think about what a Trump presidency would do to the Supreme Court. Trump has declared that if elected he’ll do what he can to roll back the marriage equality ruling.

You don’t have to be LGBT to have a lot at stake in this election, but it helps.

Think about climate change.

Think about our standing in the world.

And if you are still convinced that you have nothing to lose, think about voting for those who are the most vulnerable — such as the 11-year-old Mexican-American girl who lives in fear of her immigrant parents being deported.

Still, the life you save by voting may well be your own.

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#VoteBlue — A UU talk on “Difference”

This morning at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration (in Philadelphia) I did a reading from Maya Angelou’s poem “The Human Family” and a talk on “Difference” — the theme of this week’s service.

To see the reading and the reflection on YouTube, click here. (You can also view the YouTube video at the bottom of this post.

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” — Dalai Lama

 

I am different, of course. We all are.  In my view that’s what makes life interesting. I would say I gravitate to difference.

I’m a lesbian-feminist who came of age in the early 1980s and I had the good fortune to hear and meet many of the icons and writers of that era — including Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich.

It was at the celebration of Audre Lorde’s life — the “I Am Your Sister” conference held in Boston in 1990 two years before she died of cancer at the age of 58 — when I went to one of the conference’s “Eye-to-Eye” sessions. There, I really began to understand difference.

The idea behind the “Eye-to-Eye” sessions is that you break into a smallish group of people from a similar background and have  a heart to heart discussion.  It was based on Audre Lorde’s philosophy that she writes about in Sister Outsider, a collection of her essays, that we cannot love each other until we love ourselves.

This is the same theory that RuPaul, the internationally known drag queen icon, says every week on his televised program Drag Race — if you don’t love yourself, how the [heck] are you gonna love anyone else?”

(RuPaul is one of my sources of spiritual inspiration.)

At the conference, I chose the white working class women Eye-to-Eye session. The other Eye-to-Eye group that I could have chosen was white lesbians — but lesbians tended to be everywhere in my world back then and it seemed more important for me to focus on class.

I still remember being in that room with the tall windows and high ceilings — sitting on the floor in a circle of women. It was like being back in my high school bathroom.  But this time we were honestly discussing our lives instead of masking our pain with drugs and alcohol.

As I recall, the discussion that we had in that room was liberating.

To make a long story short, I have absolutely no connection with anyone from my background — except that my partner and I are lucky enough to still have my 97 year old father.

But in this election year, I was reminded of my background, every time I turned on the television news.

I found the racism at the rallies — and I think you know which rallies — to be painful. I also find it painful — and appalling — that someone — some unnamed someone in power — is fanning the flames of fear and hatred.  But I also do not think  that all of the people in the white working class will be taken in to vote against their own interests.  I also strongly suspect that the media is just showing us a slice of white blue collar voters who are racist — etc. — and that most people have neighbors and co-workers of all races including African Americans, Muslim-Americans, and Mexican Americans.  And even if they don’t, white working class voters can think for themselves and realize that racism and xenophobia are wrong.

This election is getting under my skin. The stakes are high, and it feels personal.  When people tell me they are not planning to vote — educated people, who might feel more privileged than they are under the circumstances — it kind of makes me crazy.  Of course, this is not a good feeling.

I meditate almost every morning — and it came to me during my meditation that I need to be more compassionate.

I was watching the Discovering Buddhism series number 11 on You Tube, when Richard Gere talked about a practice that was so helpful to me that I thought I’d share it with you. Years ago, Gere started wishing every being — insect, animal, or human — that he encountered with the greeting: “I wish you happiness.”

“I wish you happiness.”

Gere talks about the fact that there are times that this is difficult, and that these are the times when this thought turns a destructive emotion into love.

I have just started this practice and don’t know where it will take me. I suspect, though, that it will make me even more aware of the fact that as Maya Angelou writes in “The Human Family” that we are more alike, than unalike.

“We are more alike, than unalike.”

 

 

Namaste

Oh, and remember to vote.

“I wish you happiness.”

 

 

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