By Stephen Peter
Desert insults and even death threats: Berlin’s new gay commissioner Alfonso Pantisano (49, SPD) strikes worse hatred! The police take the threats seriously and put bodyguards at his disposal.
In mid-July, Pantisano was appointed the country’s first queer commissioner by the Senate. His personality was controversial, Pantisano is considered difficult even within the SPD. The Greens criticized that the position was not advertised publicly and that the House of Representatives had no say. In addition, Pantisano had repeatedly mistyped the tone on Twitter in the past.
But none of this justifies the hate that is now being thrown at him. “Since my appointment, I’ve gone to bed feeling uneasy, not knowing what’s waiting for me in my inbox, in my mailbox at home the next morning,” Pantisano wrote on Facebook. “Every day I come home worried, not knowing if there is someone hiding in the yard waiting for me.”
He made some of the dire threats public on Facebook. “One bullet is enough for this dirt. Very easy,” writes one. “Only a dead pillion is a good pillion,” says the comments, among other things.
The Berlin police take these threats seriously. The State Criminal Police Office (LKA) provides Pantisano with four bodyguards on certain dates. “Because according to the police, it is currently not safe for me to be out and about alone,” the gay commissioner said in a previous Facebook post.
But Pantisano is not intimidated: He is becoming more and more aware “that I will of course continue with my work – with full intensity. This is not a question”.