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Berlin Elects First Openly Gay
Mayor
BERLIN, June 16 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Klaus Wowereit became Berlin's first openly gay mayor Saturday, boosting the city's credentials as one of the world's gay capitals, and marking a milestone in German politics.
"I am gay and that's a good thing," the dapper and energetic 47-year-old told Social Democratic Party (SPD) colleagues last Sunday as he accepted their nomination for mayor of an interim government before new elections this fall.
The declaration screamed across headlines Monday morning, acquainting Germans with the news that their first city would be led by a gay man.
But as he takes the reins of the broke and battered government in the city-state, the announcement has been a notable non-issue for most voters.
The overwhelming majority of Germans -- 84 percent according to a recent nationwide poll by the Forsa public opinion institute -- said this week they did not have a problem with the idea of a gay Berlin mayor.
Like the new Paris mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, Wowereit has said his surprise announcement was aimed at defusing his homosexuality as a campaign issue, not making it a subject of a debate.
"I have never conducted gay politics, but rather politics as a gay man," Wowereit said.
The issue nonetheless served to catapult within 24 hours what was a relatively unknown city politician to the national stage. Reaction ranged from jubilant to snide.
"The confident appearance of Herr Wowereit shows what we lesbians and gays have achieved in recent years," said Manfred Bruns, spokesman for the Lesbian and Gay Association of Germany.
"Wowereit demonstrates that gays and lesbians in public life can behave openly. It is an anachronism today when gay or lesbian politicians stay in the closet."
Asked for his reaction, the spokesman for outgoing mayor Eberhard Diepgen of the CDU, Michael-Andreas Butz, gave a more tart reply: "It doesn't interest me, I'm already married."
And former Berlin interior minister Joerg Schoenbohm, who now holds the same job in the neighboring state of Brandenburg, joked that Wowereit could now "marry the Greens party", alluding to both a possible Berlin government coalition and Green support for legalizing gay marriage.
While Wowereit is not the first German politician to "come out of the closet", his precedent in Berlin has historical resonance.
Berlin is considered the gay capital of Germany; with homosexual rights groups estimating that between 250,000 and 340,000 gays and lesbians live in the German capital, a city of 3.4 million people.
Berlin's traditional embrace of sexual diversity reaches back at least to the 1920s, when gay men, lesbians and transvestites flocked to the metropolis as a haven where they could pursue their lifestyle openly and without fear of reprisal.
The rise of the Nazis, however, marked the brutal end of the heyday: homosexuals were branded as deviant and thousands were shipped off to concentration camps.
Today, Berlin cultivates the image of an anything-goes city. Indeed, city politicians' favorite boast for Berlin is that it is "weltoffen" -- open to the world.
In Islam, homosexuality is not acceptable. According to a fatwa on IslamOnline's fatwa bank "any sexual expression, which is beyond what is permissible by Allah, is forbidden and is a sin." This fatwa was in reference to a question about homosexuality.
The fatwa also said "the evil desires should be avoided, but according to Islam, the evil desire itself is not a sin, unless it leads to evil action. If a person has an evil desire and he/she controls it, he/she will find a great reward and blessings from Allah."
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