The LGBTQ+ communities in Germany and the United States have been working toward greater legal rights, but laws and politicians in both countries have threatened to not only halt progress but take away already existing protections. Two participants from the AGI project “Building LGBTQ+ Communities in Germany and the United States” join The Zeitgeist to discuss the current status of LGBTQ+ rights in each country, the relationship between the LGBTQ+ activists and politics, and the role of LGBTQ+ politicians.



Guest Host

Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program

Guests

Jasmin Gräwel, Journalist, Level4Films

Sarah Pope, Director of U.S. Programs, LGBTQ+ Victory Institute



Transcript 

Eric Langenbacher 

Welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Zeitgeist podcast here at the American-German Institute. I will be your host today; I’m Eric Langenbacher, a senior fellow and the director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AGI. The topic of today’s podcast is “Pride and Politics: The Complex Relationship between LGBTIQ+ Community and Politics.” We have two participants from our second year of our LGBTQ+ exchange program, and we have recently come back from a study tour in Munich. Back in September, we had traveled to New York City. And our two speakers are first Jazz Gräwel, who’s from Leipzig in eastern Germany, and she works as a journalist for a TV production company producing TV reports for public broadcasters as well as private TV channels. She’s also been very involved with Leipzig Pride, Christopher St. Day, and things like that. We also have Sarah Pope, who is the director of U.S. programs at the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, based here in Washington, DC, where they oversee Victory’s leadership development, internships, and fellowships, along with annual international LGBTQ+ leaders’ conferences, and she’s been at the Victory Institute since 2018. So welcome to both of you. 

Jasmin Gräwel 

Thank you so much for having us. 

Sarah Pope 

Yeah. Thank you, Eric. Looking forward to the conversation. 

Jasmin Gräwel 

Yeah, me too. 

Eric Langenbacher 

I thought that we would start by talking about what’s at stake in both the U.S. and Germany in terms of queer rights. In particular, perhaps we should start with a description of the current state of affairs, the lay of the land, in terms of queer rights, and maybe Jazz we’ll start with you with some thoughts on the situation in Germany. 

Jasmin Gräwel 

Thank you so much for the introduction. In Germany, we face a lot of issues when it comes to maintaining queer rights we have achieved within the last 20-30 years. Right now, we have a new government in place and the new chancellor Friedrich Merz from the CDU, the Christian Democratic Party, and they are more in favor of more conservative values and issues and all of that. It’s going to be a challenge to keep up with pushing our ideas, our queer rights that we want to maintain, basically maintain them. This is going to be a challenge for us, how this is going to be like in the next four years or more. We face, in general, a shift toward more traditional values. We have more influence from people from the right-wing parties, and people are more in favor of pushing us back. We feel this on the streets—we, as queer activists like I am. I feel it when I’m outside, when I am involved in the organization of the Leipzig Pride. Not everyone is happy that we do this. So we will see how this is going to be like in the next years. 

Eric Langenbacher 

If I could just ask or make a follow-up comment ...