CSD in Berlin 2008

Another June comes to an end and Berlin put on another outrageous CSD parade, festival, demonstration, as these few photos will attest.The 30th Berlin CSD. Included are also some shots of the newly finished and inaugurated official memorial of the German Federal Government to the homosexuals persecuted and murdered by the Nazis in the Third Reich. It stands diagonally across the street from the massive memorial to the Nazi-murdered Jews of Europe and continues its motif,

though as a single stone with a window onto a scene of two men kissing at that very spot in the park where the

memorial is located, a favorite gathering point at the time the Nazis were hunting homosexuals. Just down the street is the new highly secured US Embassy, just opened for business and to be inaugurated on July 4 in private followed by a public party (outside on the public square) the next day, and which witnessed the parade of gays and lesbians passing by today, a reminder of what the US can stand for that's good and a hope that it will again in the future.