Liberal Country

Germany’s always been good at the official story. Progressive laws, cosmopolitan culture, a country that believes in itself. And yet the violence against gay and lesbian people climbed steadily, year over year. More assaults, more hate crimes, more of everything. In the first six months of 2017 alone, there were 130 reported cases—beatings, harassment, extortion, property damage. A third more than the previous year.

The actual trajectory is what gets you. Sixty documented crimes in 2006. Over 300 by 2016. And that’s only what made it to the police, what victims reported, what got recorded. The full picture is worse.

Someone asked the obvious question: did marriage equality finally end discrimination? The numbers already answered that. Germany had legalized same-sex marriage while assaults on queer people kept rising. Two separate truths living in the same country.

What’s exhausting is how predictable it all is. You pass a law and feel progressive for five minutes. Meanwhile people are still getting hurt in the streets. The official position and the lived reality stay miles apart, and everyone knows it, and nothing really changes. Germany just keeps being both things at once—liberal in theory, hostile in practice.