Homosexuals Crossing

Apologies for the absence..  I've been busy with work, the puppies, and a couple of trips abroad. I therefore think one of my usual ramblings is more than overdue, so here we go.

Caution: Homosexuals Crossing

Homosexuals holding hands. In public!! :o

I'm just back from Vienna, a city I visit a good 3 or 4 times a year.  Hitler had hated Vienna, because when he was there in the 1920s, it was far too Jewish, Slavic, cosmopolitan, and socialist.  By contrast, he declared "Finally, a German City!" when he moved to Munich.  The 20 July 1944 conspirators who tried to assassinate him dreamed of a free democratic European union, with its capital in Vienna, rather than Brussels.  It was the natural heart of Europe, straddling East and West, and the former capital of the great multi-ethnic Habsburg empire.

Instead, Vienna was divided in 1945, in a similar way that Berlin was.  When the Iron Curtain descended on Europe, from "Stettin in the North, to Trieste in the South" to quote Churchill, the effects on Vienna were profound.  No longer a crossroads, you effectively went to Vienna only to visit Vienna because just a few miles past the city you reached a mined, armed, dead-end.  I disliked the place intensely on my first few visits: stifling, Catholic, conservative.  A place where people in their 30s and 40s actually wore fur coats and hats without an sense of irony.  A backwater.

Then everything changed.  Since November 1989 I've watched the city slowly develop back into the type of place the Nazis loathed.  The road signs point once again to Bratislava, to Budapest and to Prague.  Unlike in the rest of Austria, the (mainly ultra orthodox) Jewish community is flourishing.  It's constantly ranked in the top three cities worldwide for quality of life.  And there's a big, visible, gay community.

Literally every time I see a Vienna tram I smile

I've been used to seeing the city trams flying rainbow flags (apparently by order of the mayor) all around the city, not just for LGBT Pride, but many of them all year round.  But this year there's something new.  It's that many of the pedestrian crossings in the centre of town have been changed to same-sex couples... with love hearts.  They are a mixture of male/male and female/female - as well as male/female couples (nice inclusive measure to bisexuals and straights!)

Here is a female couple dutifully showing you to wait for the green light at the entrance to the main shopping street, Kärtnerstrasse, close to the Vienna State Opera House:

Lesbians say DON'T WALK

Symbolism

A needless, silly bit of symbolism?  The Far Right Freedom Party certainly thinks so, and is sufficiently wound up they've threatened court action over the lights.  But here I am, a 44 year old, out, self-confident gay man, who had heard about the pedestrian lights and who felt a genuine pique of excitement and happiness to see that they actually existed.

When I was a kid growing up in Germany I loved Playmobil.  In about 1980 they suddenly started randomly including Turkish figures (that is brown faced, ordinary people, rather than historic characters dressed in a fez).  They've moved on to a whole range of ethnicities now, such as the black family below.

Playmobil rocks

I guess that unless you belong to a group that isn't in the majority, it isn't very easy to put yourself in the shoes of another group and realise what public invisibility feels like.  Same-sex couples aren't by any means invisible in tv programmes, movies etc in the way they were in say the 1980 or even 1990s, but this little thing (and the rainbow flags on the trams, which I adore) costs very little, will be ignored by many people, but will really matter to some.  

It's so easy to dismiss, but then you think of the unsure gay teenager who sees that someone very senior in the city administration has made this gesture of inclusiveness.  Or you smile at the thought of little child asking their parent why these street signs are different to the ones they normally see, and hope it's a lead in to a "different couples and families" exist type conversation. 

The Times They Are A Changin'

And if you have any sense of history you start reflecting on the place this is happening.   Yes, Vienna was traditionally a "red" city, but it's also the place where tens of thousands of cheering citizens poured out onto the Heldenplatz on 15 March 1938 to cheer Hitler's triumphant arrival in the city.  The sporadic outbursts of violence against the city's Jews in the 2. district led an embarrassed Berlin to radio through orders to tone down the aggression (there were lots of international journalists in town).  Nazism grew in extremely fertile ground in Catholic, right wing Austria, even in its capital.

Hitler addresses Vienna from the Hofburg Palace

Now that same square, just one year ago, was the place for another gathering of a different type.  It was at the far end of the picture and involved some 10,000 cheering Viennese.  This time they were there to greet home triumphantly a different one of their own: a certain bearded drag queen called Conchita.  Look behind the crowd with the rainbow flags to the pale grey building in the distance.  That is the Hofburg, and a keen eye will spot the exact balcony that Hitler had stood on, well within living memory.  And OMG I just noticed that there's one of those hat-wearing Austrians in the front row.  He must be lost.  The woman to his right doesn't look too happy either.  Oh well :P

WE LOVE YOU CONCHITA!

But seriously, do you get what a massive change this is?  At the incredibly serious, and wonderful, Haus der Musik, which is devoted to the Great Composers, the Theory of Sound etc. there is a Conchita exhibit right there as the first thing you see.  Vienna has gone through 180 degrees, and it's not just since 1938.  It's more like since 1989.

Conchita's Dress and Portrait, Haus der Musik. 26" waist. Amazing!

Just like Ireland, which recently gave a massive two fingers to a long history of the Church's attempts to control, manipulate, oppress and repress people's private lives and morality, this is about so much more than just LGBT rights.  The popular referendum in the Republic of Ireland was about accepting that all sorts of people don't "fit the mould" (whatever illusory thing that mould was).  It was about sending a huge signal of acceptance.  It was about saying that we want a modern society, where people are more than tolerated: they are welcomed.  In both Ireland and Vienna's cases that is probably as much a domestic message as one intended for an international audience.  It's about how people outside view those places today.  And it's a message that genuinely fills me with happiness and hope.

An outstanding, inspiring result in the Irish SSM referendum

Now, most importantly... the next blog will contain puppy updates, I promise!