Aug 16, 2007News: In a German “School State,” Gays Remain Outside
By vanrozenheim
(Renningen, Germany) - After a mother interfered on behalf of the dignity of marriage, a school project at a German school has gotten a bitter aftertaste, say students and educators involved. The Stuttgarter Zeitung reported that students at Renninger High School created their own “state” with the help of their teachers. They named their creation Maredivia, and were justly proud of it. Maredivia was a multifaceted and all-inclusive sort of utopia in the students’ eyes until one mother expressed concerns about the “sanctity of marriage,” which resulted in homosexuality being banned from their project, which the teens are unable to comprehend.
As an exercise in the principles of democracy which has earned praise from parents, teachers and students alike, Maredivia had taken months to complete. Three short days before the end of the school year, the twelfth graders were ready: A parliament was formed, laws were made and a national government was established. Students and teachers worked at “businesses” on an equal footing, reaching a “turnover” of 15,000 Euro.
It was second nature to the founders that Maredivia should naturally also have matrimonial ceremonies. Some of the twelfth graders wanted to be married as homosexual couples - but here is where freedom in Maredivia reached a sudden dead-end.
The mother of one student, who works as a verger with a local Catholic priest, took umbrage at the idea of having to explain the twelfth graders’ actions to curious students in lower grades. Her fears centered on the “sanctity of marriage” as interpreted by the Catholic Church, and she felt the matter serious enough to call it to the attention of Renningen’s mayor, Wolfgang Faisst, in an e-mail.
The mayor, in turn, feared an outcry from other concerned parents and forwarded the mother’s concerns on to the high school principal, Werner Elflein, with a message attached which urged him to intervene. Elflein, also fearful of possible fall-out from the project, strongly urged project coordinators to refrain from allowing gay marriages.
Maredivia, as a result, is not the free democratic utopia it was supposed to be.
“We wanted to not endanger the project and keep it running”, says student Christopher Glück, but he’s angry about the marriage ban. “I refuse to accept that existing [German] law is not recognized” because of pressure from the mayor, the principal and a single mother. Glück and many of his classmates are bitterly disappointed and see the behavior of the mayor and their principal as unjustified interference in their democracy project.
Laura Auhorn, one of the main student project leaders, finds the banning of gay marriages absurd: “We thought that perhaps there might be problems with Maredivian laws, but not with German federal law.” After all, federal legislation establishing civil partnerships for homosexual couples was enacted in Germany in 2001. Nonetheless, the pressure from the mother, mayor and principal meant that just those should be left out of the Renninger high school students’ democracy project.
As it turns out, the mayor’s and principal’s fear of protests was not unfounded. “I was concerned about public reaction and the school’s reputation,” says principal Elflein. He says he felt there were signs that there might be problems with some parents, since, as he puts it, in the matter of homosexual partnerships public opinion is not yet as advanced as the law. And so he is quite astonished that there are protests, but that they are coming from an altogether different corner than he had expected.
The issue of homosexuality at Renninger High School is not a new one. Last summer, another mother had publicly protested that an openly gay teacher at the school was selected as a chaperone for a camp excursion her son’s class was scheduled to go on. Tino Miksche, the teacher in question, is now furious that homosexuality is again being dredged up as a concern by a solitary mother. He is also worried that as a result, his students may be pushed into feeling that homosexuality is a topic which should be avoided, even though, as a matter of simple statistics, between two and eight percent of the teachers and students at Renninger High School are gay.
“Generally, though, the climate is tolerant in Renningen”, says Miksche. Erwin Eisenhardt, parental advisor to the school until last year, says Renningen is actually quite worldly, despite its smallish size. He says that the mother’s concerns about gay marriages in Maredivia are not shared by the majority in town.
Nonetheless, says Inge Bücker, the current acting parental advisor at the High School, the issue of homosexuality should be discussed again. “Some parents feel disturbed by it”, she says.
Students agree and say they will have words with the school’s administration after the summer break. “We want to clarify exactly what went down,” says Glück. Mayor Faisst is also to take part in that discussion and has already indicated his willingness to participate in order to eliminate doubts as to the reasons behind his actions.
“My only concern was proportionality,” he says, adding that his goal was only to “ensure that the whole project was also educationally guided,” and that there was never any intent on his part to prohibit anything.
