Rainbows Don’t Bite
Norman Röhlig was on his vacation terrace in the sun, drinking something cold, and he felt the truth he’d been avoiding: he lived in a tolerant German bubble. Berlin was gay-friendly, liberal, safe. But Russia was just one country, and homophobia was global, and he was sitting in his comfort doing nothing about any of it. He thought about writing something, calling it out, but figured he’d just yell into the void like everyone else.
Instead, he actually did it. His friends Julian Laidig and others took the call seriously. They organized a protest in Berlin aimed at the Sochi Olympics, at McDonald’s and General Electric and Panasonic, all the sponsors pretending those games weren’t backed by a state that had criminalized homosexuality. Russian law banned discussing gay people around minors. Public hand-holding could get you arrested. Mobs hunted LGBTQ+ people online and hurt them, and the state did nothing to stop it, or worse, encouraged it.
Thousands of people showed up to protest in Berlin. Most were ordinary people who’d seen Norman’s call and decided they couldn’t stay comfortable anymore. The march was loud and colorful, moving through the city to the Russian embassy. Norman had said something about being real people with hearts in the right place, not just a target demographic. And people listened.
This is what happens when someone gets off the terrace. The stakes become real enough that other people move. Whether the corporations and governments actually listen is separate from the fact that something moved, that the comfort zone got smaller, that the margin between knowing and doing got thinner.
Rainbows don’t bite. Neither do people. The Russian laws act like they do. The protest said otherwise, and thousands of people moved.