Activists in Germany continue to celebrate Sunday’s election of two transgender women to the country’s parliament.
Tessa Ganserer of the Green Party is from Bavaria. Nyke Slawik, who is also a member of the Green Party, is from North Rhine-Westphalia.
Joschua Thuir, a police inspector who is an instructor at a German Federal Police center for basic training and further education. He is also the trans ambassador of VelsPol Deutschland, an NGO that represents LGBTQ police officers in the country.
Thuir on Tuesday told the Washington Blade that Ganserer has worked with him on trainings for police officers. Thuir said Ganserer and Slawik’s election is “a really, really big opportunity for us as a trans community to have speakers now in the German Bundestag who are trans by themselves.”
“It’s much more impressive to listen to people who are in those situations instead of people who talk about people who are in those situations,” said Thuir.
Julia Monro of the German Association for Trans Identity and Intersex People agreed.
“It is a big signal to the world that Germany is a country with diversity,” she told the Blade.
Election results are ‘great opportunity’ for LGBTQ rights
Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany will likely succeed long-time Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union. A coalition government will need to form because Scholz did not receive a majority of the votes in Sunday’s election.
Henry Engels of the Lesbian and Gay Association in Germany on Monday in a statement congratulated Scholz. Engels also said the election results are “a great opportunity for the improvement of LGBTI rights in Germany.”
“The increase in votes for the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany), Greens and FDP (Free Democratic Party) also shows that voters want a queer-politically progressive government,” said Engels. “We call for a government to be formed that, after the paralysis of the last legislature, now seizes the opportunity for a queer political awakening, and we expect the Greens, FDP and SPD to implement their queer political election promises. For us, only a coalition is acceptable that brings real change in a timely manner.”
The Lesbian and Gay Association specifically urged the new German government to develop “a national action plan against LGBTI hostility” and to amend Article 3 of the country’s Basic Law to specifically ban discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation throughout Germany. The Lesbian and Gay Association also called for “gender self-determination” and the admission of LGBTQ refugees into Germany.
