The rainbow flag will be waved for the first time in the Bundestag for this year’s Christopher Street Day (CSD) this Saturday in Berlin. At 6:30 a.m., the rainbow flag of the queer community should be hoisted at the portals and on the tower of the Reichstag building. A rainbow flag should also fly at the Federal Chancellery.
Bundestag President Bärbel Bas (SPD) welcomed the action, which had previously been decided unanimously in the Bundestag Presidium. “It’s an important symbol,” Bas told the Tagesspiegel. The sign is still necessary. “There is still far too much discrimination and hatred against queer people,” Bas said.
The President of the Bundestag recently signed the Charter for Diversity and wants to implement it for the Bundestag administration with its around 3,000 employees. “It’s not just a signature,” Bas told the Tagesspiegel and announced an internal survey to dismantle possible discriminatory structures. “In the Bundestag administration, it must be a matter of course that everyone works side by side, no matter what religion, origin, gender or sexual orientation we have.”
She herself will not take part in the Berlin CSD parade this Saturday due to scheduling conflicts, but wants to take part in the CSD in her constituency in Duisburg on July 30th. “It’s a tradition for me – and I’ve promised to do it in my new position, of course,” said Bas.
The President of the Bundestag also announced that the Bundestag would also commemorate queer Nazi victims on Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 next year. “In fact, on January 27, 2023, at the memorial event for the victims of National Socialism, we will focus on the people who were persecuted, imprisoned and murdered because of their sexual and gender identity,” Bas told the Tagesspiegel. The Presidium had already decided that unanimously.
An official Bundestag commemoration of the Nazi victims who were persecuted and murdered because of their sexual and gender identity has been demanded for several years by an initiative; a corresponding petition from many people from science, civil society and victims’ associations has been available since 2018. So far, the Bundestag Presidium had not responded to this, and ex-Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) had also rejected the request.
One is now in the middle of preparations for the event, said Bas. And further: “Unfortunately, there are no more survivors, but we are very closely coordinated, also with the Lesbian and Gay Association of Germany.”
