Bavaria’s Sacred Rainbow Cock

Markus Söder, Bavaria’s minister-president—think of him as Germany’s most reliably retrograde regional politician—signed a law in 2018 requiring a Christian cross to hang in every state building in the region, effective June 1. The theological twist: he insisted the cross was "not a sign of a religion" but a symbol of Bavaria’s cultural identity. As if you could launder a crucifix into heritage by saying so loudly enough.

The constitutional problem is real. Germany separates church and state, and mandating a religious symbol in government offices is exactly the kind of entanglement the Basic Law is designed to prevent. René from the blog Nerdcore noted the sleight of hand: Söder wanted the cultural authority of the cross while disclaiming its religious content, as if two thousand years of accumulated meaning could be surgically removed and replaced with "Bavarian tradition."

But that’s not why the photo went viral. Söder’s press team released an image of him holding a wooden cross and gazing at it with something approaching devotion—the specific, intimate look of a man contemplating something he loves and will not surrender. The internet read it immediately and unanimously: here was a portrait of a man cradling a magnificent, gleaming, rainbow-colored dildo. The meme was total. The original photograph ceased to exist. What survived was something truer.

Print it out. Frame it. Somewhere in a better parallel universe, that rainbow cock is hanging in every Bavarian school, office, and church—right where Söder intended to put something else.