BERLIN: A memorial in Berlin to homosexuals persecuted and killed under the Nazis should be completed later this year, the German government said Monday, following an agreement on details of the design.

The memorial, to be sited on the edge of the capital's Tiergarten park, will complement the nearby memorial for the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

Last year, a jury chose a design by Danish-born Michael Elmgreen and Norwegian native Ingar Dragset for the memorial. It will be shaped as a gray concrete slab, with a window allowing visitors to view a film projection inside. Initially, the plan was for a video of two men kissing — which drew criticism that lesbians were ignored.

Bernd Neumann, Germany's culture minister, met Monday with backers of the memorial. A statement from his office said that the plan is now for clips of men kissing and women kissing to be alternated every two years — doing "justice to the criticism that lesbians were excluded in the previous draft."

The memorial "should be completed this year," the statement added. The memorial's construction was approved by the German parliament in December 2003, and the federal government is pledging €600,000 ($808,900) to build it.

[...]

Few gays convicted by the Nazis came forward after World War II because of the continuing stigma — and because the law used against them remained on the books in West Germany until 1969. The German parliament in 2002 issued a formal pardon for homosexuals convicted under the Nazis. One reason the pardon took so long was because supporters linked it to a blanket rehabilitation of 22,000 Wehrmacht deserters, a move many conservatives opposed.

German politicians have slammed role playing games being taught to school children on how to pick up a gay partner.

The Regional Institute for School and Media LISUM in Berlin has introduced the controversial exercises for school kids from 14 upwards as part of a way of reducing prejudice against homosexuals.

But the role-playing has outraged politicians.

Education spokesman for the liberal FDP party Mieke Senftleben has demanded the teaching materials be replaced and said: "Education about homosexuality, discrimination and intolerance is necessary.

"But I think having such topics on how to pick up gay men in role playing games for youths is completely wrong. We are talking about 14 year old pupils."

Like "do you want to hook up some time?" is not an appropriate way to phrase a casual invitation to "hang out." This statement not only could be reasonably interpreted as an invitation to something quite different, it almost certainly would be interpreted in a manner inconsistent with the statement's intent. This specific example is not hypothetical. I was indeed asked by a straight boy to explain just how it was that a Gay acquaintance of his got the mistaken impression that sex was on the agenda for the evening.

(London) Count Gottfried von Bismarck, the stylish and troubled scion of one of Germany's most famous families, has died at the age of 44, police said Wednesday.

Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.

The great-great-grandson of Prince Otto, Germany's Iron Chancellor and architect of the modern German state, the young von Bismarck showed early promise as a brilliant scholar, but led an exotic life of gilded aimlessness that attracted the attention of the gossip columns from the moment he arrived in Oxford in 1983 and hosted a dinner at which the severed heads of two pigs were placed at either end of the table.

When not clad in the lederhosen of his homeland, he cultivated an air of sophisticated complexity by appearing in women's clothes, set off by lipstick and fishnet stockings. This aura of dangerous "glamour" charmed a large circle of friends and acquaintances drawn from the jeunesse dorée of the age; many of them knew him at Oxford, where he made friends such as Darius Guppy and Viscount Althorp and became an enthusiastic, rubber-clad member of the Piers Gaveston Society and the drink-fuelled Bullingdon and Loders clubs.

I never thought I'd be so intensely jealous of an obituary.

I used to write obits for the Chicago Tribune years ago....damn would I have loved to write that one. That is just freakin gold.

I keep rereading the obit, and I find new things to envy each time. I hope SCIENCE can preserve his brain and transplant it into Hedonism-bot.

So -- the question: since I don't find any of those things all that questionable in a moral sense (imprudent, to be sure, but prudence never gets you invited to any of the good parties), does that make me "louche" as well?

So what you're saying is the fact that I find an "extravagant host of homosexual orgies" to be a patron, a civic servant, an apt role model makes me louche?

(And who can forget Rosie -- the Princess of the Flame Warriors?)

Louche: Of questionable taste or morality.

louche |loō sh |
adjective
disreputable or sordid in a rakish or appealing way : the louche world of the theater.
ORIGIN early 19th cent.: from French, literally ‘squinting.’