Christopher Street Day Parade

Bus float with a sign that says "Marriage for All" on the side

On Saturday was the annual LGBT parade in Berlin, called the Christopher Street Day parade after Christopher Street in New York where the Stonewall Riots took place in 1969. While the commemoration in the U.S. is called "Gay Pride" Day, in Europe it's called Christopher Street Day, reflecting, I think, the European tendency to value remembering history, especially in areas where discrimination against minorities is concerned, as opposed to pride, which, in the end, can lead to discrimination against minorities if the minority becomes the majority.

In Germany, gay marriage is still under discussion, though it looks like from the Supreme Court decision last week that it is now legal in the U.S., so the German gay community doesn't have quite as much to celebrate as the American. Of particular difficulty in Germany is the relationship between the two major Christian churches, Catholic and Lutheran, and the government. Both churches are supported by a church tax, which is paid by self-declared members and collected by the federal government. Most of the money goes to maintaining the beautiful Baroque, Romanesque, and other churches in Germany, but this tight intertwining of church and state means that the church often exercises outsized influence on government policy, particularly when a center-right government is in power as had been the case up to a couple years ago, when a coalition government between the center-right and center-left took power. Catholic bishops have been as vocal in speaking out against gay marriage in Germany as in the US, but the German Supreme Court doesn't have the same power to decide social issues like the US Supreme Court does.


We walked down the Ku'damm, which was the starting point for the parade, on our way to the Berlin Aquarium and got some pictures on the way before the parade actually started. We saw many signs of mainstream acceptance at the parade, in the form of floats sponsored by large companies like SAP. Many of the floats were buses, as you can see from the picture above, and had amazing sound systems that we could hear even though they were on the other side of the huge Tiergarten park from us. The parade started on the Ku'damm and ended at Grossen Stern, on the Strasse des 17 Juni in the middle of the Tiergarten.


Here's some pictures of the colorful people who were hanging around waiting for the parade to start (some pictures courtesy of my brother-in-law, who was visiting with Renate's sister this weekend):

Here's a float from Axel Springer, a publisher known for conservative political views in its newspaper:

This is approximately the same political constellation as Fox News supporting a float in the New York LGBT parade.

We spent most of the afternoon in the Aquarium, and the parade was almost over when we came out. We walked over to KaDeWe, the huge department store on Tauentzienstrasse, so my brother- and sister-in-law could check it out and for me to buy some premium chocolate. From the top floor, I took this picture of the city sanitation department cleaning up behind the parade:

The parade left an incredible mess behind, not just the usual disposable cups and napkins from people eating, but glitter, streamers, pamphlets, you name it. They had four street cleaning machines, two in each lane, and an army of orange clad street sweepers working to prepare the street for business again.

Later that evening, we went out for ice cream at a cafe on the Ku'damm and I took this picture of a wedding cake in the window of the bakery nearby that specializes in wedding cakes:

 Decorated appropriately for the day.

Updated 7/7/2015: Apparently I was wrong about the German Supreme Court. In 1955, they ruled that homosexuality was illegal. I don't know whether that means a constitutional amendment will be needed or not. It looks as if the CDU, the center-right party that is the major partner in the coalition government currently holding power, is split about the issue of gay marriage,  called "Homo-ehe" in German. Will be interesting to see how this resolves.