The upper chamber of Germany’s parliament, the Bundesrat, killed $19 million in funding for the new Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation Sept. 29.
The lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, created the foundation and allocated the money on June 27 to fight anti-gay discrimination and compensate the gay movement for the destruction of its infrastructure by the Nazis.
Hirschfeld is believed to have been Germany’s&emdash;if not the world’s&emdash;first gay activist. He founded the gay Scientific Humanitarian Committee in 1897.
The Bundesrat nixed the legislation creating the foundation by sending it to a Siberia-like joint committee for further discussion.
“We are back to square one,” said one activist.