Out and proud: June is used worldwide to make the LGBTQAI community visible and to celebrate queer identity. But while June is already drawing to a close, the festivities in Berlin are only just picking up speed. For the first time this year, Pride Month will be officially celebrated in Berlin – organized by the CSD e.V., which organizes Berlin’s Christopher Street Day every year.
From June 28, the anniversary of the Stonewall protests, the association is calling for more space to be given to “LGBTQIA issues and encounters in and with Berlin’s queer communities” for four weeks. This will culminate in the big CSD parade on Christopher Street Day on July 23rd.
“We’re not interested in flashy flashes,” says the CSD association’s website. Instead, with Pride Month, they want to “set long-term impulses that initiate topics, but do not discuss them, enable a change of perspective and contribute to real further development.”
The association sets four main topics, all of which should be consistently present in the program: religion and spirituality, FLINTA and lesbian visibility, trans and people of color, as well as the umbrella theme House of Pride. While all focus topics are to be given the same weighting in the first three weeks, the last week is dedicated to the “House Of Pride” motto, under which all focal points are to be combined.
Below we have curated a selection of upcoming events. The full program can be found on the CSD e.V. website.
cross and queer? Religion is often in conflict with queer identities. This was recently clearly shown by the
However, religious practice and belief can be great sources of strength for people, the CSD association reminds them and therefore asks: “How do members of the community find their way around the religion? What offers are there apart from the big religious communities?”
Here the CSD e.V. wants to take on a “bridging and mediating function” and enable interreligious, intercultural and intersectional exchange on the topic. In addition to talks with queer believers, nuns, pastors and imams, panels with atheists and church critics are also planned.
On July 5th at 8 p.m. a service will be held by the “Gay Church Berlin” in the Ev. Twelve Apostles Parish organized. The panel “Homophobia is a sin – God wants your emancipation” will also take place in the Schöneberg Apostle Church on July 19 at 8:00 p.m.
On July 22, a multi-religious service with clergy and representatives from Judaism, Christianity and Islam will take place in St. Marienkirche in Mitte at 6:00 p.m. The Berlin mayor Franziska Giffey and the senator Klaus Lederer are also part of the party.
On July 24th at 2:00 p.m. the event “Queerness and Islam” of the “Anlaufstelle Islam und Diversity” (AID) can be attended in the Ibn Rushd Goethe Mosque in Moabit.
The second focus of Berlin’s Pride Month focuses on women, lesbians, intersex people, trans people and asexual people, in short: FLINTA. The aim here is to make FLINTA people visible, to strengthen young members of the scene and to promote exchange within the Berlin community.
This includes, for example, “Queer Garten – FLINTA Party”, which will take place on July 2nd from 6 p.m. in the Festsaal Kreuzberg.
But the public viewing at the start of the women’s European Championship on July 6th is also one of the focal points. From 6:30 p.m. the English or Austrian team can be cheered on here at SchwuZ in Neukölln.
Just two days later, on July 8th, starting at 10:00 p.m. in SO36, the queer-feminist solidarity party “8. March is every day”.
The celebrations can continue straight away on July 23: From 9:00 p.m. the official lesbian pride party will take place in the Metropol on Nollendorfplatz with the “Liquid” party.
The third focus of Pride Month is dedicated to the specific challenges of queer, non-white and trans people. Who actually causes which problems and who helps to solve them? The aim is to present scene-defining personalities, to support them in even better networking and to give their stories space. “Whether Latin, Asian, Turkish, Arabic or BPoC – with whom, where and how do people in these LGBTQIA communities celebrate?” asks the CSD association. Care is taken to ensure that all formats are as multilingual as possible.
The workshop “Deconstruct the binary” by the non-binary transfeminine activist and artist Stella will take place on July 4th at 6:30 p.m can.
On July 6th at 5:30 p.m. an outdoor voguing ball of the “5 Elements Collective” will take place in the “Haubenaucher”. On the same day, the “Golden Gilfs” can be admired in the BKA Theater in Neukölln.
A day later, the “Transtopia” event by and for trans people takes place at Sage Beach, which also serves as fundraising for the Transpride. Workshops start at 2:00 p.m., followed by a drag show at 6:00 p.m. and finally a party at 8:00 p.m.
In the last week one wants to realize program points with a direct relation to the demonstration. Support for Eastern European Pride will also be an issue. For the numerous other events, it is worth taking a closer look at the Pride Month program.
So a “Sober Party” without alcohol and drugs for dry and clean community members is planned, an HIV-themed evening, fags neighborhood walks, self-defense courses for FLINTA people or a workshop by qeerhandicap e.V on the subject of disabilities and queer life. For the first time since the pandemic break, the gay and lesbian city festival is taking place again. Under this year’s motto “Equal rights for unequals – worldwide”, the Regenbodenfonds e.V. is organizing the event around Nollendorfplatz for the 28th time.
The grand finale will be celebrated on July 23 in the big CSD parade. The bilingual motto: “United in love! Against hate, war and discrimination” calls for, among other things, a norm-critical gender, body and sex education, political measures against hate crime and hate speech against queer people, as well as for queer visibility and diversity in the work context.
In addition, further concrete demands of individual groups were formulated, such as the demand for a regulation for the full assumption of costs by health insurance companies for trans people or an automatic co-motherhood in lesbian partnerships. The complete list of demands can be found on the CSD e.V. website.
