08/30/2005
The Kinky are Welcome in Berlin
Openly gay Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit has come under attack for officially endorsing an international fetish party.
Said the endorsement: "Berlin is a tolerant and open metropolis. We are proud that people from different backgrounds and with different preferences feel comfortable here and party together... (Parties like Folsom Europe) allow the scene to present itself openly and break down skepticism and prejudice."
Deutsche Welle reports that daily newspaper Bild published several graphic ads for the party.
Bild printed advertisements for the festival featuring bare-chested men licking each others' jackboots and a man chained to a urinal and wearing leather briefs, boots and a gas mask under the heading "Perverts". On the opposite page, the newspaper splashed a photograph from last year's party featuring a dog-collared sex slave kneeling before his leather-clad master.
Wowereit also gave a statement to the paper: "There's no question it is a flamboyant scene, but that is also Berlin. And as long as there is nothing forbidden happening, I expect tolerance."
Now there's an endorsement you won't see issued in America.
Posted 11:03 AM EST by Andy Towle in Travel | Permalink
Like it?
Subscribe to FREE Towleroad daily headlines with our RSS feed!
RECENT STORIES:
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
My dj boyfriend is playing at Folsom there next year. That story is good to hear.
Posted by: protogenes | Aug 30, 2005 11:13:42 AM
No wonder Berlin is the only city in the world with dark rooms for straight people!
Posted by: Miguel Cabo | Aug 30, 2005 12:58:41 PM
"Berlin ist arm, aber sexy." ("Berlin is poor, but sexy.")
(Klaus Wowereit, in a television interview, 2004)
Posted by: yohji | Aug 30, 2005 1:06:26 PM
Nothing wrong with that...see you all in berlin :)
Posted by: Peter | Aug 30, 2005 1:09:40 PM
Look the other story, linked in the bottom of that one, in Alabama the guy would be arrested, in Germany police is meant to serv :)
Posted by: Miguel Cabo | Aug 30, 2005 1:30:29 PM
"Now there's an endorsement you won't see issued in America."
And why should we? 98% of the self-deluding, self-justifying gay SM scene is made up of guys whose only way of dealing with wanting to suck cock is to package it in such bent concepts of ultimate masculinity. "Oooh, Mary. Look over there: a REAL man!" Why can't they just become gay Republicans like other self-loathing homosexuals? Ooops. I forgot Jeff Gannon. Isn't he both?
Posted by: Leland | Aug 30, 2005 3:20:15 PM
Interestingly enough, Klaus Wowereit is not the only openly gay mayor in Germany. Ole von Beust, governing mayor of Hamburg, Germany's second biggest city, is gay, too. But what a difference in style.
Where Wowereit comes across as a shrill party boy, Ole von Beust is everybody's darling. Even the most conservative Hamburgers agree with the way he does his job. His father once gave a tabloid an interview in which he let the world know what a "fine young man" Ole's first boyfriend was.
I mean there is nothing wrong with a fetish party. But I do believe that von Beust does a hell of lot more for the "gay cause" than Wowereit. After all, being gay is not only about leather outfits.
By the way: The real reason for the "Bild Zeitung's" attack on Wowereit is a different one. We have an election in Germany in 3 weeks and Wowereit is one of the leading members of the social-democratic SPD who advocates the same kind of coaltion government he is leading in Berlin for Germany as a whole, namely a coaltion of the SPD with the communist and anti-american PDS. The "Bild" on the other hand is a rather conservative and stoutly atlanticist newspaper.
There's more to the whole situation than meets the eye ;-).
Posted by: Martin | Aug 30, 2005 8:06:11 PM
I shouldn't think that most Germans would find a fetish party of any sort out of the ordinary.
Posted by: Chris | Aug 31, 2005 4:17:35 AM
...and San Diego is German for Whales Vagina ;)
Posted by: Wayne | Aug 31, 2005 11:39:21 AM