Suppose a boy reveals to his parents and those around him that he is gay on his 18th birthday.

What reactions can he expect?

Helen Bubrowski

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Julia Schaaf

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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At best, he meets an understanding family and classmates who support him.

But unfortunately, even in 2022, he still has to reckon with being bullied, insulted in the schoolyard, and ridiculed on the internet.

And of course there are still families who declare this to be a problem.

It can be so bad that a person has to move out of the house because they can't take the pressure.

You came out about 20 years ago.

What has happened since then?

Can you hold hands with your partner in public today like straight couples do?

Public perception has changed completely, as has the legal situation.

Nevertheless, to this day I am cautious about hugging or kissing my husband in public in some situations.

Out of a learned fear of being insulted, beaten up, spat on or mobbed at any moment.

Personally, I have had relatively little experience with discrimination.

But I see every day how hostile society can be to minorities.

Critics find that the queer community, with its eight to ten percent of the population, is already completely overrepresented in social discourse.

How do you see it?

With such great campaigns as "Out In Church", when employees of the Catholic Church went public with their sexual identity, people like to say: Why do they have to talk about it all the time now?

You are equal.

There is marriage for everyone.

But that is only partly true.

In the church, people who are gay, lesbian, or trans are at risk of losing their jobs.

It's not about talking about the partnership or sexuality all the time.

But making it visible is necessary in order to overcome social devaluation.

In addition, one shouldn't forget that heterosexual, cisgender people also constantly show their partnerships to the outside world, simply by living them out as a matter of course in everyday life.

Do you understand the concerns of the critics that the "normal model", i.e. marriage and the father-mother-child family, could be crushed?

No not at all.

There is no normal model.

There is social diversity.

People who are married and have children are the model most often lived.

But there are also people who are not married and have children, rainbow and blended families.

It's all always been there.

If queer people now say: Hello, we also want to be seen and have rights, that's not an attack on marriage.

No one wants to take anything away from marriage.

I even think that opening up to homosexual couples has strengthened marriage as an institution because more people have entered into this form of committed partnership.