A brief note before you read: this is a deeply personal post about fear, anger, and choosing hope in challenging times.
Hatred directed at anyone who doesn’t fit into the heteronormative box isn’t new. It comes in many forms and from every corner of society. I speak from experience: I grew up in a small village in Noord Brabant, the Netherlands during the 70s and 80s, and as it happens, I’m gay. After what felt like a period of progress, space for the LGBTQ+ community across Europe is shrinking once again.
Mind you, words like ’emancipation’, ‘acceptance’, and ‘tolerance’ make me wince. Tolerance? What does that even mean? My sexuality is just one part of who I am, alongside being a migrant, a film buff, and an Ajax Amsterdam fan… I’m not looking for anyone’s ‘tolerance’. I don’t need permission to exist.
And yet, that basic sense of security isn’t something we can take for granted. Many non-heterosexual people move to big cities looking for like-minded communities and the safety of anonymity. I did the exact same thing. I’ve lived in Berlin for nearly eleven years now. But even here, I’m not truly safe. Not in the way heterosexual people are.
Last Saturday, there was an attack at Berlin Pride (Christopher Street Day), leaving one person dead and 29 injured. The perpetrator was a radicalised Islamist with a deep-seated hatred for non-heterosexual people. You could write it off as someone who is ‘just’ disturbed, but that doesn’t make the reality any less bitter.
Every encounter with violence chips away at my optimism. I can feel myself hardening. On Sunday, I texted some friends cynically: “Maybe we just shouldn’t host Pride anymore. After all, displaying our freedom and joy on such a scale is bound to be provocative. We’re just hurting the delicate feelings of people who can’t bear to see us happy.”
It didn’t stop at sarcasm. A visiting friend from Paris wondered how many people back home were watching live updates of the attack and secretly cheering. The next day, I was on the train. I saw a young guy looking at his phone with a slight smile. My immediate thought was: Is he watching footage of the attack? Is that why he’s smiling? I shocked myself. My own mindset was turning toxic.
On the phone with a friend in Amsterdam who had just been to the opening of World Pride, I vented in anger: “Anyone who comes to Europe and doesn’t view women as equals, or rejects gay people, should just be deported. Get out if you don’t want to live by our values.”
It was a venomous thing to say, steeped in the very hatred I was trying to fight. The contrast with my own partner, who I’ve discussed this with at length at home, couldn’t have been starker.
My boyfriend is from Turkey. Our shared fear following the Pride attack is twofold: this kind of violence plays straight into the hands of the far right. With elections coming up in Berlin, the AfD is leading the polls. My partner showed me comments on the Instagram account of a German-Turkish journalist: a shocking majority of followers living in Germany with a Turkish background see the AfD as the solution. And an unrepresentative poll among German gay men last year already showed a massive shift to the right among them, too.
But the far right isn’t the answer. If they get their way, first they’ll target migrants, then non-Christians, and then non-heterosexuals, until all that’s left is a ‘pure’, homogeneous mass. My partner falls into all three of those categories; can you imagine how suffocating that position feels for him?
On top of that, he said something that really struck a chord with me: “I don’t want intolerant people sent back to their countries of origin at all. Women over there, non-heterosexual people over there, they have every right not to suffer under people like that, too.”
He was spot on. Blinded by my own fear and cynicism, I had conveniently forgotten what true solidarity actually means. I refuse to let myself get dragged into that bitterness any longer. I want to contribute to a world where people can thrive, where you’re free to be yourself, and where we afford others that same grace. Not by turning a blind eye to danger, but by speaking up. By listening to perspectives that expose my own blind spots. And above all, by letting optimism drive me rather than fear.
Cynicism is easy, but optimism is an act of resistance. Real solidarity is the most powerful answer we have to division and fear. Let’s choose progress together.
Are you in?
