Hey hey, it's Baffi, Founder of Q*

Caution: Friedrich Merz Is a Friendly Man! Somehow, our Chancellor is to blame for all of this – for my queer activism, for the sharpening of my political claws, for this very app. Friedrich Merz entered my life back when I was still in school, and I remember reading about his outrage over loosening Germany’s abortion laws. Two years later, already living in a lesbian flat-share, I watched him vote against criminalizing marital rape. Yes, that old man (who back then was younger than I am now)

was already on the wrong side of history in prehistoric times – I knew it, society knew it, even his own party knew it. By the ‘90s, the CDU had already run out of patience for him. When the party sank into its donation scandal, Merz had his 15 minutes of fame as opposition leader, railing against same-sex marriage and preaching about „deutsche Leitkultur“. His racism, nationalism, and queerphobia already made him a darling of the right wing, until a woman from East Germany (yes, he’s allergic

to both) took him out of the game. By 2006, I was working in a bookstore, and Merz had long faded into political has-been, when one day, there he was standing right in front of me. And I won’t lie: he was unexpectedly pleasant. A gentle voice, kind eyes, and in those five short minutes, I found myself thinking: Friedrich Merz is a friendly man. Our shared enemy is the far right, right? That did something to me. Over the years, among my trans, lesbian, and gay friends, I learned that

conversations with conservatives could be not only possible but meaningful. As an activist, I’ve always believed in bringing together different political forces – organizations, institutions, the press – while political party lines grew increasingly irrelevant. Our shared enemy was the far right: once a two-percent fringe, suddenly a twenty-percent nightmare for German democracy. Everyone agreed on that. Everyone except Merz. When Chancellor Merkel stepped down after fifteen years, his political

ego stirred...