Abstrakt
The coming out of homosexuals plays a special role in contextualizing the dramatic changes in public and publicised treatment oft he private realm. After reviewing issues surrounding this phenomenon (such as the emergence of a uniform subject - at least, from a sexual perspective), the article examines medial aspects of Klaus Wowereit's confession of homosexuality - controversial less for the declaration itself than for his added comment, "And that's the way it should be!" The emerging coordinates in this "case" for a public staging of what is intimate/private, and the reactions hereto, are adressed via concrete questions about what conditions surround both a coming out and public discourse about homosexuality.
The latter are then examined and generalised based on a now fundamentally different status of the private realm within the public medial space, which - regardless of whether cause or effect - also indicates a new status of the private/intimate in everyday life and self-identification.