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The speech to the CSD 2001
Federal President of 2001, Moritz Leuenberger for the opening speech of Christopher's Street Day, Helvetiaplatz, Zurich

At that time, they have me with the argument loaded I have gone also with a minority into the Albisgüetli 1) therefore I also shall come to you anyway. So they have made this comparison. I nevertheless assume that there aren't too many parallels between the Christopher Street Day and the Christopher Day in the Albisgüetli 1)!

Be right you in a point, I want to go with minorities in the president year. Therefore I was in Davos also with the economy representatives with the railwaymen in Berne with the cartoonists in Morges and I was in Geneva at the automobiles.

This country consists of only minorities from language religious, cultural.

Sometimes what concerns you, I ask myself: Are you at all a minority, then? Because: Identical where I go - to an economic event, to the restaurant, to the theater, into the Federal Houses of Parliament, to the dress store - everywhere, I meet you.

I have had a look at your program and I have stated, that you reveal to the rewarding aim audience for die have become advertising:

You have far more than half of the sides been able to fill with advertisements.

Which minority creates something like that?

So I have wondered: Does it still need this event at all? Does it need the Federal President? Aren't all of you a social power long?

I then have got letters in which I was warned of you. My doubts have vanished there. In these letters the talk of «disgrace» of a «game of the devil», the most of all I might not quote at all without making me punishable.

I have seen a vulgar and disparaging contribution of the emcee Harald Schmidt (The Jay Leno of Germany) over Klaus Wowereit (Mayor of Berlin and Gay) the day before yesterday.

I also have read from the difficulties which you have in the Valais.

And I have read that you are exposed to harassement at your jobs, not promotions, that some even are dismissed if they stand by her homosexuality. You have made these problems the topic of this year's CSD at the job.

I notice that the clearing up just hasn't formed move of our degrees of latitude completely anyway yet. The clearing up took the absolutism off in the course of the 17. and 18. century that is almost 300 years ago. They stated Europe the first human rights, the liberal expression of opinion, the books, the exact science, the idea of the tolerance and primarily the «light of the reason».

Church and throne had to hand in her monopoly on the only right opinion and morals.

This was, a liberalization of the morals claim therefore virtually an opening of the morals market.

King Friedrich the Great of Prussia recognized: «In my state can everybody get blissful to his fasson.»

And Goethe - I would like to welcome Johann Wolfgang cordially here on the Helvetiaplatz - wrote:

«One doesn't send himself for everyone

Everybody sees, how he doing it
Everybody sees, where he has left
And who stands that he doesn't fall.»

Fight for the formal legal recognition

In a state under the rule of law heard such a principle formally held tight. The principle «is for each of his» held tight in the Swiss federal constitution in the preamble as «mutual consideration and respect». You particularly hold tight, that everyone is the same with the law - also the dissidents, also the differently living. And it stands concretely: «Nobody may be discriminated against because of his life-form».

Homosexual couples have closed the formal right, her partnership without state live hindrances. Who wants to provide each other may not be held. Once an adapted law of inheritance, a stay right for foreign partners, needs improvements for certain for the social insurances, for example the pension fund a visit right in the hospital or in prison.

This year the federal council to it will present project investigations to the people for a registered partnership for the statement.

There exist partly laws corresponding for quite a long time already in the northern states not however in the southern one. These are cultural differences which we also feel in Switzerland. The opinions for the policy of the federal council are on this and on the other side of the linguistic boundary «Röschtigraben», between town and country, between old and young not the same.

Just because of these cultural political differences we go for a policy of the small steps. You preferred to want to making progress for certain a little more courageously see us, I know this (I think of the marriage or adoption right).

The policy of the small steps is a policy of also the consideration. This goes everything for these much too fast on those people namely, which feels taken by surprise. It is a politics in the consciousness therefore that discussions need time between politically different attitudes.

Fight for the social recognition

The legal recognition is one part. The other one is the social acceptance. The women know it from her long fight for equal treatment: A legal equality doesn't mean a social equality yet.

Also Goethe - he still is here and belongs quoted once again - knew this and he took it calmly. He wrote:

«Every honest effort
Be persistence awarded.»

It has to be owed to your persistence for example, that I bring the words «gaily» or «lesbianly» much more easily over the lips today. These were obscene swearword in my youth, and I was surprised later that you don't give yourself another, less loaded name in my youth, and I was surprised later, that you don't give yourself another, less loaded name.

I must congratulate you on it today. This way you have but gone the more painful way; but you have stirred something up.

The words you have taken insult and disgrace on himself but you are to this open socially acceptable «gaily» and «lesbianly» (they were still socially acceptable but quickly once; I think accepted as regards content). Would you have something Latin or Greek been able to make way on a politically correct name - perhaps?

You could have rechristened yourself. As the scrubwomen who have to room nurses and later been rechristened to room beauticians. As the thicknesses which got over the intermediate stop from «corpulent» to «full figure» or even only «challenged horizontally».

Or as the old people whom one must harmlessly call «senior citizens» of today.

A political correctness creates taboos, promotes the superseding and handicaps thinking. That the former foreign worker turned «guest» worker hardly has his circumstances improved. It has primarily calmed the guilty conscience of many Swiss women and Swiss man.

Always changing etiquettes don't seem of the Enlightenment. On the contrary.

They hush the problem and prevent the solution in the end.

You, ladies and gentlemen, want to move something, you want to change attitudes. This is a process staying power and you need very much. Because the process lasts already long and he still will well last long.

It is an alone comprehensibility that everybody shall get blissful according to his own fasson actually. We are surprised that more than 1,700 year lasted after Jesus Christ for it till a politician said this alone comprehensibility. We are but further around something today once again one quarter millennium later. But the alone comprehensibility still isn't there. But she must come.

You have a right to it.

 

Translate from german to english by Boa


1) Christoph Blocher was a former Federal Councillor and Swiss populistic republikan politician. He organizet every year a event on a place in Zurich with the name Albisgüetli.

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