East Germany
Forming of gay groups ignites church struggle
Lesbian, gay, bi and trans pride series part 21
By Leslie Feinberg
In January 1982, in East Germany, the Evangelical Academy
Berlin-Brandenburg held a conference titled, "Can One Speak
About It? Homosexuality as a Question for Theology and Pastoral
Care."
Lesbians and gay men took part in the conference. The agenda
reportedly focused on how to use insights of modern sexology to
reduce prejudice and harmful concepts about homosexuality, and
how to provide a structure for lesbians and gay men to get
together and discuss their own issues.
This conference generated a public forum about same-sex
love.
Later that year, some gay and lesbian activists in Berlin
and Leipzig formed the Homosexual Working Group within the
Youth Section of the Lutheran Church.
The group quickly spread to more than 20 cities, not just
the big urban areas like Magdeburg, Chemnitz and Rostock, but
in small towns like Zwickau, Plauen and Neu strelitz. The
Leipzig and Dresden groups were founded by theologians who had
been denied ordination because they were an out gay man and an
out lesbian woman.
Buried in that last fact is a reminder that organizing by
lesbians and gays continued to face opposition from the
Protestant hierarchy, even if tactically it was a useful
political tool for the church.
Like the Catholic Church in the Polish workers' state, the
Protestant Church battled the socialist German state. Raelynn
J. Hillhouse stated that during the early years of the GDR,
"the church and state often were in an undeclared war in which
neither expected the other to survive. Because of its close
relations with the West German church, the East German church
was seen by the state as a foreign institution." (Slavic Review
49, 1990)
The East German church had close ties to the hierarchy in
the capitalist West.
While the young workers' state curtailed the church's social
role, it did not seize church property and continued to use
public funds for pastoral training. In concessions to the
church in the early 1960s and in 1978, the state signed accords
which opened the door for the church to expand its
outreach.
As a result, close to 200 groups formed under the
organizational umbrella of the church. These included lesbian
and gay, environmental, disabled--and the dubiously vague
category of "human rights."
Specifically, the objectives of the gay groups--offering
support and counseling and educating parishioners about
homosexuality--was not political in nature. However, the goal
of addressing social problems, while vague, did open the door
to criticisms of the socialist state.
The overall coalescing of more than 200 organizations under
their aegis gave the church hierarchs a wider social base from
which to pursue their anti-communist opposition to the workers'
state.
Struggle broke out within church
Not everyone at the top of the church ladder was so happy
about allowing lesbians and gays into the fold under any
circumstances.
Hillhouse observed in her 1990 article on sexual politics
and social change in the GDR that, "The presence of lesbian and
gay organizations has brought about a major controversy both
within the church, which has customarily condemned
homosexuality, and among gays and lesbians, who have
traditionally been persecuted by the church."
She explained that in 1986, based on the results of a
church-commissioned study, a bishops' conference did conclude
that biblical condemnations of same-sex love should no longer
be used as justification for discrimination. However, she
stressed, "Although the bishops settled one controversy by
officially allowing gay and lesbian groups to meet within the
church, they refused to take a clear position on the ordination
of homosexuals. The church has, however, demonstrated the
limits to its acceptance of homosexuals in its repeated denial
of ordination of Eduard Stapel, the director for homosexual
work of the Magdeburg city mission, because he lives in a
homosexual partnership."
Denis M. Sweet, a researcher quite unsympathetic to the
socialist state, did note the hostility to gays within the
church. "These working groups did not advance without concerted
resistance from within certain well-situated Lutheran and
charismatic factions within the church, particularly from the
south of the GDR with its own traditions of theology and
piety--so much so that the church authorities in Saxony felt
obliged to append within the territory of their administration
a publication that countered the largely positive and tolerant
brochure Homosexuelle in der Kirche? (Homosexuals in the
Church?) issued in 1984 by the central office of theological
study of the East German Church (Theolo gische Studienab tei l
ung der Evangelischen Kirchen).
"This Saxon alternative bro chure warned about 'militant
homosexuals' forcing an entry into the church to advance the
'ideology of homosexual emancipation.'" (Sexual History of the
Political Left)
And lesbians and gay men were not so thrilled about working
under the auspices of the church, either. John Parsons made
this point sharply: "Of course, many homosexuals, including
those who were members of the Communist Party, were not
comfortable with the church and did not find this association
helpful." (OUT/LOOK 1989)
Hillhouse added, "As was the case with groups from the other
social movements within the church, the gay and lesbian
associations were not entirely religious: Perhaps as few as 10
percent of the members identified themselves as
Christians."
But a new and dramatic development was emerging in the
mid-1980s that allowed the lesbian and gay movement to burgeon.
The GDR workers' state opened up a widespread secular campaign
to combat prejudice and discrimination against same-sex
love.
Next: Unprecedented gains
Reprinted from the Dec. 2, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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