{"id":10406,"date":"2026-06-14T01:01:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T23:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/?p=10406"},"modified":"2026-08-02T00:36:18","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T22:36:18","slug":"meine-gedanken-zum-pride-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/meine-gedanken-zum-pride-month\/","title":{"rendered":"My thoughts on Pride Month"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-msabpxzy-898903f9ac12a1039a3d25f61d37d269\">\n.avia-section.av-msabpxzy-898903f9ac12a1039a3d25f61d37d269{\nbackground-color:#f0fff0;\nbackground-image:unset;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div id='av_section_1'  class='avia-section av-msabpxzy-898903f9ac12a1039a3d25f61d37d269 main_color avia-section-default avia-no-border-styling  avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_one_full  avia-builder-el-first  avia-bg-style-scroll container_wrap fullsize'  ><div class='container av-section-cont-open' ><main  role=\"main\" itemprop=\"mainContentOfPage\"  class='template-page content  av-content-full alpha units'><div class='post-entry post-entry-type-page post-entry-10406'><div class='entry-content-wrapper clearfix'>\n\n<style type=\"text\/css\" data-created_by=\"avia_inline_auto\" id=\"style-css-av-msabrpo1-02a9223b0a3d9c2d10a9d0925cd76c15\">\n.avia-image-container.av-msabrpo1-02a9223b0a3d9c2d10a9d0925cd76c15 img.avia_image{\nbox-shadow:none;\n}\n.avia-image-container.av-msabrpo1-02a9223b0a3d9c2d10a9d0925cd76c15 .av-image-caption-overlay-center{\ncolor:#ffffff;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div  class='avia-image-container av-msabrpo1-02a9223b0a3d9c2d10a9d0925cd76c15 av-styling- avia-align-center  avia-builder-el-1  el_before_av_one_fifth  avia-builder-el-first'   itemprop=\"image\" itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" ><div class=\"avia-image-container-inner\"><div class=\"avia-image-overlay-wrap\"><img decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" class='wp-image-10360 avia-img-lazy-loading-not-10360 avia_image' src=\"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/geralt-gay-pride-9700663-1333x630.jpg\" alt='' title='geralt-gay-pride-9700663'  height=\"630\" width=\"1333\"  itemprop=\"thumbnailUrl\"  \/><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<div  class='flex_column av-1d8dirq-fb9e3771f1848efe8c44e4c486531fc3 av_one_fifth  avia-builder-el-2  el_after_av_image  el_before_av_three_fifth  first flex_column_div'     ><\/div><div  class='flex_column av-ienobq-247984db835837f111ae52f453cda5fa av_three_fifth  avia-builder-el-3  el_after_av_one_fifth  el_before_av_one_fifth  flex_column_div'     ><section  class='av_textblock_section av-ms84r53z-86f9923ae445042859ebad2a8c491f46'   itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock'  itemprop=\"text\" ><p><strong>Jesus said: \u201eFor I was a stranger and you welcomed me.\u201c\u00a0<em>(Matthew 19:34)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>My thoughts on Pride Month<\/h2>\n<p>What does Pride Month mean today \u2013 why is this month of June still important?<\/p>\n<p>He invites me to consider the following fundamental points:<\/p>\n<p>Why does one facet of human life receive or require so much attention?<\/p>\n<p>I, Esther, have been living more or less openly as a lesbian for 40 years.<\/p>\n<p>That wasn&#039;t easy in the past, when prejudice and defensiveness prevailed. Today I&#039;m happy that it&#039;s much easier and more natural to be &quot;queer&quot;\u2014a term that didn&#039;t even exist when I first came out as a lesbian.<\/p>\n<p>And yet my perfectly normal lifestyle is still, or once again, being publicly discussed. This tires and exhausts me. For example, I still hear that being queer is a choice.<br \/>\nNo, it isn&#039;t. The only decision I have to make again and again has been: how openly do I deal with it, how much do I reveal to the outside world?<\/p>\n<h3><strong>\ud83c\udf08 <\/strong><strong>A public sign of democracy<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Something I never would have thought before: How we talk about queer people also says something about the state of our democracy. I was deeply moved when, a few days ago, the 82-year-old Austrian Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen, together with his wife Doris Schmidauer, wished everyone a Happy Pride Month (I<a title=\"Austrian President Van der Bellen with his wife Schmidauer \ud83e\udd29\ud83e\udd70\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DZiDaidNWBR\/?igsh=cHFqYmp5YzVsdm9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Instagram link<\/a>) and emphasized that queer rights are human rights.<\/p>\n<p>At that moment it became clear to me: being queer is not a fringe issue, but a question of how one lives one&#039;s life. It has also become a measure of freedom, just like women&#039;s or children&#039;s rights.<\/p>\n<p>It is therefore not surprising that hate comments and criticism of alternative lifestyles are becoming increasingly prevalent, especially in totalitarian or very conservative circles.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes it seems as if queerness touches on something that scares people.<\/p>\n<p>And yes \u2014 many of the loudest voices against queerness come from men.<\/p>\n<p>In a world where masculinity is confused with dominance and domination, many men may not be able to accept that gay men desire other men \u2013 that their traditional gender roles are challenged. Perhaps out of fear of being treated the way they themselves see and treat women.<\/p>\n<p>But quite honestly: This explanation is not enough for me.<\/p>\n<p>Because the pain, the defensiveness, the harshness that some people display runs deeper. Queer people, too, sometimes have such a defensiveness towards their own lifestyle.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, we too sometimes struggle with homophobic tendencies. Coming out doesn&#039;t automatically turn you into a carefree, rainbow-loving, queer-positive person.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#039;s exactly what makes me ask: What does queerness touch within us \u2014 and why does it feel so deeply wrong and alien?<\/p>\n<h3><strong>\ud83d\udcd6 Jesus and the Stranger: An Invitation to Healing<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>In the Works of Mercy (Matthew 25) it says: <em>\u201eI was a stranger and you welcomed me.\u201c<\/em> These words appear in a scene where Jesus describes the Last Judgment, according to which he will ultimately judge humanity. And the surprising thing is: neither morality, nor biblical knowledge, nor style of piety are decisive for the judgment \u2013 but rather concrete actions: how one treats other people.<\/p>\n<p>He gives several examples of good deeds, and one of them is: sheltering strangers.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Jesus sums everything up: <em>\u201eWhatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This means that if something or someone is unfamiliar to me, Jesus invites me not to reject it or him\/her, but to welcome it. Queer people may be unfamiliar \u2013 and that is precisely where Jesus&#039; invitation begins: not to fear strangers, but to welcome them.<\/p>\n<p>Our instructor for meditation and spiritual guidance, Franz Xaver Jans-Scheidegger, expanded on this idea: We should not only look at and embrace the foreignness outside ourselves, but also the foreignness within ourselves. Perhaps also the inner impulse that immediately cries out to those who are queer: &quot;That&#039;s impossible!&quot; \u2013 and which reveals more about ourselves than about others.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>\ud83e\udde1 When freedom hurts<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>It was precisely at this point that something clicked for me. Because the longer I thought about it, the clearer it became: The resistance many people feel towards queerness often has surprisingly little to do with queer people themselves \u2013 and a great deal to do with their own history.<\/p>\n<p>Dagmar, for example, says that her most important coming-out was not being queer, but saying yes to her vitality.<\/p>\n<p>She grew up as the grandchild of war survivors; at home, there was hardly any laughter or celebration. Her parents were overwhelmed by the wildness of their young child, by her liveliness and zest for life. Exuberance was forbidden; it was embarrassing and, according to her parents, only proved that they hadn&#039;t raised their child well. Even as an adult, Dagmar sometimes found it difficult to simply tolerate and allow this kind of exuberance in others because it felt somehow wrong\u2014even though she fundamentally wished and desired this kind of vitality in everyone.<\/p>\n<p>Psychologically, this is a well-known pattern: those who were restricted as children carry this restriction with them \u2014 and at the same time long for exactly what was forbidden.<\/p>\n<p>Being queer is often similar. If you&#039;ve learned that there&#039;s only one &quot;right&quot; way of life (the right man with the right woman), then the freedom of others can seem like background noise. It&#039;s a reflex: <em>\u201e&quot;This cannot be allowed.&quot;\u201c<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And yes \u2014 this applies to us too. We, too, who are queer, carry unhelpful thoughts within us. We too sometimes struggle with homophobic tendencies, and we too find it difficult, after the initial &quot;yes&quot; to ourselves, to keep saying it again and again. To keep getting up and moving forward.<\/p>\n<h3>\u2728 Pride as an inner movement<\/h3>\n<p>Perhaps that is the real invitation of Pride Month: to be allowed to be more colorful, louder, more vibrant \u2013 and more honest.<\/p>\n<p>Spaciousness begins where we no longer push away the unfamiliar within ourselves. Pride reminds us that openness, life, and love are not only found where everything is familiar, but also precisely where we are ready to open ourselves to the unfamiliar or to our own longing (provided it is healing).<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s why Pride Month is still important to me today.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Happy Pride Month!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div><div  class='flex_column av-kozxae-c88bd79258784606289b7af204b69f77 av_one_fifth  avia-builder-el-5  el_after_av_three_fifth  avia-builder-el-last  flex_column_div'     ><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/main><!-- close content main element --><\/div><\/div><div id='after_section_1'  class='main_color av_default_container_wrap container_wrap fullsize'  ><div class='container av-section-cont-open' ><div class='template-page content  av-content-full alpha units'><div class='post-entry post-entry-type-page post-entry-10406'><div class='entry-content-wrapper clearfix'><div  class='flex_column av-av_one_full-a2cef933b0a555f25d1e39b22a8e9dae av_one_full  avia-builder-el-6  el_after_av_section  avia-builder-el-no-sibling  first flex_column_div'     ><\/div><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In June, I often feel how fragile freedom remains. Pride Month reminds us that people must constantly fight for the right to simply be themselves\u2014without fear, without justification, without defensiveness. And it raises an old question anew: Why does the unfamiliar sometimes affect us so deeply, and why do we find it so difficult not to reject it, but to embrace it?<\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":10360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-weg-impulse-fuer-dich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10406"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10462,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406\/revisions\/10462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gottimalltag.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}