Orlando And The Rainbow Jihad
By Roland Taureau
In 1933 the Nazis commenced a campaign to rid Germany of homosexuals. By the end of World War II, around 100 000 people had been incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps. Of those who survived, many continued to be interned after the war, their homosexuality still considered a crime by the Allies.
Apparently the tenuous balance between incarceration and murder is what separates civilised societies from barbarous ones. Or perhaps it just separates the victorious from the defeated.
Extremists have oppressed, bullied, attacked and even murdered members of our community for a very long time now. And there will doubtless be more dark days to come.
I’ve always been struck by the futility of this pursuit. Even if you could rid the world of LGBTQI people – if you could actually find and kill us all – a new generation would be born again tomorrow. It would be like a new wave of socio-cultural X-Men blessed with the power of diversity, inclusivity and glitter.
The nature versus nurture debate is over, people.
We are here to stay.
You might as well get used to us.
Over the past 70-odd years we’ve dragged ourselves up from the mud and, in many ways, amassed power and prestige. We have money and social acceptance in much of the Western world. Our marches have slowly turned into marriages, and the momentum shows no signs of abating.
I imagine in most Western neighbourhoods the residents would be far more comfortable with the gays moving in than the Muslims these days.
Gay = chardonnay on a Sunday. Muslim = fire and brimstone.
In the years since WWII, my temporary home, Berlin, has transformed from the national capital of a people who committed the most abhorrent crimes in modern history, to a beacon of tolerance, diversity and inclusion.
Rainbow lights still adorn the UBahn at Nollendorfplatz, despite LGBTQI culture having permeated practically every corner of the city. Berlin no longer has a ‘gay centre’, rather a diaspora of queer venues in every suburb, which wait to welcome the weird and wonderful with the inclusive spirit for which our community is renowned.
Our alphabet soup is chaotic, fucked-up and 100% human. We don’t ask you to vote for us, to pray to our god, or even attend our parties. We make no apologies for ourselves, and we stand on no moral soap box other than our determination to uphold the rights of people to be themselves, without fear of marginalisation, persecution and attack.
Recently I moved to one of the more conservative neighbourhoods in Berlin. A place where Muslim families have long defined the population. I wondered how it would be when my boyfriend and I arrived? Would we be able to hold hands and kiss in public?
I walked the streets, past kebab shops and Hookah bars, and saw that we already were.
Three gay couples I counted on my first day. Sitting happily outside a Turkish Imbiss or Spatkauf, affectionately holding hands, kissing and bantering over their beers and shawarma.
It’s not Muslims who mind us so much. Especially not those that put on such a spectacular display of drag belly-dancing at Berlin’s monthly ‘HomoOriental’ party.
It’s extremists who want us gone. Extremists from many social, political and religious creeds.
They’re the same breed as the extremists who pose such a grave threat to Muslim communities the world over.
Extremists aren’t new or hard to come by. Hitler wasn’t peculiar to a particular epoch or nation. Hitler wasn’t even German. There are Hitlers everywhere. Some prominent, some anonymous, explosive and fleeting.
Give them guns and we’ve seen what they can do.
Give them validation, power, money and bombs and the results will be devastating.
But in the end their fear and loathing is a waste of time. We will not return the favour. We are not afraid and we are not hateful.
Like our Muslim brothers and sisters, we are engaged in a struggle. A quest for respect, recognition and equality. A Rainbow Jihad the world over, that values individuality, diversity and inclusion.
That values love in all its forms.
As heartbreaking tales continue to surface about the victims of the attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub I can’t help but fear one story in particular. The story of the mother or father, the brother or sister, the grandparents or the friends who found out that their loved one was lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and / or intersex through a news story.
I fear for the family who didn’t have the opportunity to embrace our spectacular community, or get the chance to express love, pride and acceptance to the person they lost.
That’s why it’s so important to be brave and to continue the struggle.
Tell your families who you are. Tell your friends. Hold hands in public. Kiss one another and be proud.
They can’t kill us all. And even if they try, in the most fundamental, the most literal of ways, we will be reborn.
It almost sounds biblical.