Christmas Cards Germany

Presentation on LGTB Legislation by the German Group

LGBT rights in
Germany
Presentation by Nati, Jan, Stefanija, Hannah, Mario and Anja.

Introducing you to the subject

- Germany has frequently been seen

as one of the most gay-friendly

countries in the world

- A large majority of Germans

support same sex marriage.

- Another poll in 2013 indicated that

87% of Germans believed that

homosexuality should be accepted

by society, which was the second

highest score in the world following

Spain (88%).

- The former mayor of of Berlin is one

of the most famous open Gay people

in Germany next to the mayor of

Hamburg.

  

Paragraph 175, made homosexual acts between males a crime,

and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality

as well as forms of prostitution and underage sexual abuse. All

in all, around 140,000 men were convicted under the law.

The law history

Same sexual activity between men was made illegal under paragraph 175 by the German empire in 1871, nazi Germany extended these law as during world war 2.

The extension was was repealed in the 50s and decriminalized in 1968 in both East and West Germany.

During the 1920s and 1930s, gay and lesbian people in Berlin were generally tolerated by the society and many bars and clubs specifically for gay men were open.

East Germany
East Germany inherited Paragraph 175. Communist gay activist Rudolf Klimmer, campaigned in 1954 to have the law repealed, but was unsuccessful. His work prevented any further convictions for homosexuality after 1957

In the five years following the Uprising of 1953 in East Germany, the GDR

Government instituted a program of "moral reform" to build a solid

foundation for the new socialist republic, in which masculinity and the

traditional family were championed, while homosexuality, seen to

contravene "healthy mores of the working people"

Then later on in 1968 homosexuality was decriminalized.

On the 11 August of 1987, the East German government opened a state owned

gay disco in Berlin.

It was claimed that the gay community was far more united in East Germany

then West.

West Germany

West Germany inherited Paragraph 175, which remained on the books until

1969, as opposed to East Germany, the churches influence in West Germany

was very strong.

The German Christian Democratic Union, the dominant political force in

post-war West Germany, tended to ignore or oppose most gay rights issues.

At the national level, advancements in gay rights did not begin to happen until

the end of the Cold War and the electoral success of the Social Democratic

Party.

In 1990, the law was changed so that homosexuality and bisexuality were no

longer grounds for being discriminated against in the military.

In 1986, the popular soap opera Lindenstraße showed the first gay kiss on

German TV.

Summary table

• Same-sex sexual activity is legal nationwide since 1968.
• Equal age of consent since 1994.
• Anti discrimination laws in employment since 2006.
• Same sex marriage since 2017.
• Recognition of same sex couples since 2001.
• Stepchild adoption by same-sex couples since 2005.

• Joint adoption by same-sex couples since 2017.
• LGBT people allowed to openly serve in the military since 2000.
• Right to change legal gender since 1980 (surgeries), and since 2011 sterilization is not required.
• Homosexuality declassified as an illness .
• Msms allowed to donate blood since 2017.

FIRST EXCHANGE OF STUDENTS IN MÁLAGA

     HERE WE ARE! OUR FIRST EXCHANGE OF STUDENTS TOOK PLACE IN MÁLAGA.
     After being working on LGTB legal framework, we met in Málaga to share experiences and learn more about the way to get more respectful schools and societies.
This was our plan










However, pictures speak louder than words, and here is a brief summary of the week in this beautiful video done by the English teacher Ana Concejero

    As we can read on the program, we started talking about the current situation concerning LGTB rights or phobia in our schools. The results of the different countries were rather similar, except for Romania, as we were told that being LGTB was a kind of taboo. In this sense, we want to thank this country for taking part in this project as they set an examle for other schools.

    We would also like to thank the lawyer Charo Alises who is always willing to help. She had visited us before and on this occasion she was was accompanied by a member of the Erasmus Student Network who translated her lecture about  hate crimes

    Then we continuedwith a LGTB Tour through the city.  Erasmus Students Network and Apoyo Positivo were in charge of it. They introduced the city to our partners, its past and its present, talking about LGTB personalities from Málaga or places. So it contributed to make more visible LGTB  community and how they have contributed to create more spaces of freedom in the town.

Jorge Suáres Muñoz from the Erasmus Student Network

Apoyo Positivo

 

   
     We would ike to mention an interesting anecdote that speaks about how much stereotypes are spread, even if we want to fight against them: 
 After the tour we were handing out among the people we met some badges with the logo of the project to let them know what we were working on. We saw, then, a young man wearing dreadlocks, so we adress to him, but he refused to takeone of our badges, because he said "he disagrees with homosexuality". On the opposite, a middle aged woman came to meet us and congratulated us for the project, that she considered quite necessary, specially because her daughter was trans. This situation made us think that, although one of the aims of this project is to fight against stereotypes, we ourselves aren't safe from them, as we had just thought that a young boy was going to be more open minded just beacuse of this age and of the dreadlocks.

End of the Tour

     

    Other important moment of this exchange was the presentations about LGTB rights, historical personalities and the results of the diagnosis in each school. It was quite interesting as we could compare the situations of the different countries and enrich our knowledge. Students had been workin on this topic for a couple of months and they did it quite well.

Thanks to our students' research and the presentations they ellaborated, we could also learn more about LGTB rights and personalities in different countries:

EXCHANGE OF STUDENTS IN MÁLAGA QUESTIONNAIRE

                               YOUR OPINION IS IMPORTANT. LET US KNOW!!!!

LEGAL FRAMEWORK TIMELINE

     On the occasion of our first short-term exchange of pupils celebrated in Spain, our students have prepared this timeline in order to explain our guest students and teachers how Spain has evolved concerning LGTB rights.
     Evelyn Martínez, Amaral Macas and Laura Gómez have prepared this timeline that can be downloaded if needed.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM SPAIN

     Christmas were coming and we decided to wish our school community a very merry Christmas whereas making visible our project. This greeting card was selected among several designs done by our students. It represents our best wishes of tollerance for the whole world.
     Here it is the card done by Belén Herrera, Miguel Muñoz, Noemí Alvárez and Noe Recio from the second year of Baccalaureate.

 And the message inside:

     But still we wanted to make our project more visible. So the card was posted on Instagram and  handed out by a human pride flag!
Seven students, each of them wearing a different colour sweatshirt, composed the pride blag. They went through the halls of the different pavilions of the school visiting the staff room, the different classes, cleaners, administrative staff ...handing out this Christmas cards and we have to point that we were very welcome.

GAMIFICATION

     We are deeply convienced that the best way to fight against Lgtbphobia is education, that's why we started this project, and there are a lot of ways to educate. One of them are games. Since we are childs we learn playing, we repeat roles from our daily life, but we also learn new ones. Sometimes the problem appears when games spread, willingly or not, stereotypes or contribute to keep ignoring reality. It happens with gender roles. Girls normally play to take care of babies whereas boys play to save the world. Concerning education on diversity, the problem is that normally games ignore just this: the diversity. We don't use an inclusive language and we don't make visible other models of families or identities. In this project we wanted to brake that tendency, so our students have elaborated inclusive games that contribute to make everybody feel represented.
Here they are some examples that can be used by anyone who whises it.


1. Card game (done by Marina Auilar and Alex Dobra)


Game instructions:

This is a card game with 12 different types of cards, there are 4 cards of each type.

 ° The challenge of this game is to be able to form the group of 4 cards (the quartet) of the same type.

 ° At the beginning 4 cards are dealt to each player and 4 are placed in the center.

 ° When each player has the 4 cards, they have to quickly analyze their cards and those of the center to see if they can exchange any of their cards for others that interest them to form the quartet.

 ° You can take the card that the partner needs if you see it in the center to avoid them winning.  This is why it is important that others do not know what group you are trying to form.

 ° When a player lacks only 1 card to form the quartet, he has to say the loud voice "lgtb", otherwise even if he forms the group he will be disqualified.

 



2. LGTB Trivial. (done by

The aim of this game is to have fun whereas learning about LGTB personalities and rights.
This is the board, which is composed by different topics, each of them in a different color: Geography, Science, History, Art and Culture.
Instructions:
Two teams are formed.
There are five categories of questions and five characters correspondent to each category.
Every team must get three right questions to have the opportunity of obtaining one character of each category. When the three right questions are done, you will go to the Crown Box where is compulsory to answer one more question concerningtha character you want to get. However, if you have three right questions and you want to steal one character from your opponent, you will have to answer correctly one question concerning the character wanted.
The fastest team obteining three characters from three different categories will win.

And here they are the questions:





 3. The Goose Game (done by Francisco Javier García Godoy, Nell Lilian Spencer Drake y Nerea Esperanza Mira)

The goal of this game is being the first to reach the end of the board. However, many difficulties will have to be faced during the way, as much as LGTB people have in their dalily life. Thankfully, there are also many nice surprises on the way, as it also happens everyday. So the point is not to despair, to keep trying and to enjoy our journey.

Instructions
To play you need a small item per person as a marker (like a coin) and a dice.
You can play up to 4 people
Each player starts the game with their item on the Start box. In each turn, they throw the dice to decide how many boxes they have to move. Depending on the box they land on, there's a list of possible things that the players can do:

Rainbow boxes: they move to the next Rainbow flag and throw the dice again.

The Honey Moon boxes (they appear twice on the board, and they represent a Moon made of honey) and the Transition boxes (the ones with the masculine and feminine symbols fusing, that appear twice on the board) have a similar effect, but they have to go back to the first if they land on the second one.

Boxes in which the player loses its turn: stereotypes (1 turn, the one that has a woman and a man talking), gender dysphoria (2 turns, the one that has a red masculine silhouette over a feminine one), bullying (3 turns, the one that has a person covering their face with their hands), jail (4 turns, it's literally a jail)

The Death box: if a player lands on these box, they have to return to the Start box. It is located right before the final Box.

The other boxes are neutral ones. When players land on them, the organizers will tell them something about the LGBT+ community, and sometimes they'll have to answer a question

Neutral boxes: the flags, in order, are: Heterosexual, bigender, aromantic, poliamorous, non-binary gender, asexual, gender fluid, androginous, transexual, demigender, pansexual, lipstick lesbians, bisexual, gay bears, demisexual.

The other boxes, in order, are: Travesti, Drag King, Drag Queen, gender identity, June (Pride Month), "Gay Slang", Pope, third gender, homosexuality, gender expression, to be camp, cisgender, sexual attraction, Stonewall, Begoña passage, Lesbophobia, Babadook, gender ideology.

The objective of the players is to reach the Pride box, located in the center of the board.