Herta Leistner is a German is a practitioner of social pedagogy, a teacher and an author. She is a Deaconess of the Evangelical (i.e. Protestant) Church who has come to wider prominence as a pioneer of the lesbian liberation movement inside the church. In 1996 Leistner was awarded the German Order of Merit ("Verdienstkreuz am Bande"). Her award hit the headlines and the high-profile theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, an uncompromising critic of homosexual practice, returned his own Order of Merit in protest.