Send Germany's Openly Gay Foreign Minister Abroad!



Westerwelle could begin his journey in Iran, which depends heavily on Germany as its No. 1 European trading partner. In his infamous address two years ago at Columbia University, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denied the very existence of homosexuality in his country—an absurd claim. Three years ago, the case of two Iranian teenagers hanged for homosexuality drew worldwide condemnation.

After Iran, it'd be on to nearby Saudi Arabia, which, despite a burgeoning gay underworld, beheads gay people. Then he could fly down to Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe refers to gays as "perverts" who are "lower than dogs and pigs." It was probably inevitable that a crude strongman like Hugo Chávez would turn to prejudices like anti-Semitism and homophobia in order to find scapegoats for his ruinous policies; who better than Westerwelle—as the foreign minister of a country that overcame its own murderous encounters with these two hatreds—to confront Chávez about targeting such vulnerable populations? How could these assorted dictators respond to the foreign minister from the fourth-biggest economy with anything other than bluster?



Still, in some places it would be strange for Westerwelle not to talk about his oppressed gay brethren, just as three female secretaries of state in the last decade made women's rights a major feature of their tours. Hillary Clinton and her predecessors Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice have given great rhetorical and symbolic force to the cause of female equality during their tenures. A major part of this advocacy is unspoken; by their very presence on the world stage as representatives of the most powerful nation on earth, these top female diplomats have lent credence to the notion that women not only are deserving of the same opportunities as men but are just as capable of executing high-powered, high-pressure jobs. We can hope that people around the world will draw similar conclusions about gays in part due to Westerwelle's visibility.

The German government is unlikely to send out Westerwelle on a name-and-shame tour. Germany has yet to solve more pressing problems like the Iranian nuclear threat, for instance (it has repeatedly balked at the prospect of levying stringent sanctions on one of its major trading partners). So the likelihood of its government risking good relations with a variety of countries—no matter how atrocious their human-rights records—over the welfare of gays is slim to none. But here's hoping that, in traversing the globe, Guido Westerwelle will help put a dent in every nation's closet door.

Kirchick is an assistant editor of  The New Republic and a contributing writer to The Advocate.

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