In April 2008, the European Commission suddenly dropped the horizontal directive from its annual program – a legislative policy against discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, sexual orientation and religion, as stated in Article 13 of the Amsterdam Treaty. Instead, it is supposed to protect the disabled only, whereas other categories are to be regulated with the help of non-binding recommendations. [The Amsterdam Treaty was signed on October 2nd, 1997, and entered into force on May 1st, 1999. The Amsterdam Treaty made substantial changes to the Treaty on European Union, which had been signed at Maastricht in 1992.] At the moment, the only valid general prohibition of discrimination within the EU, is that on the basis of racial or ethnic grounds; sex discrimination is forbidden within the employment market and when accessing goods and services, whereas other categories – sexual orientation, age, disability and religion – are forbidden solely within the employment market. The hierarchy of rights within the European Union, therefore, becomes obvious.

The withdrawal of the highly anticipated anti-discrimination directive – the European Parliament was forced, for the seventh time, to publicly call for the prohibition of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation – signifies a large step backwards. The European Commission justifies its dropping of the horizontal directive, fearing the negative signals, which came from some Member States, e.g. Germany and the Czech Republic, which strongly oppose the comprehensive directive. On the other hand, it simply overlooks Member States which support the horizontal directive, e.g. Sweden, Finland, Spain and the United Kingdom. The UK representative of the European Parliament, Liz Lynne, has thus launched a petition, which calls on the European Commission to honor its proper program’s articles and keep its word.

Who is the European Commission afraid of? Off-the-record information from the lobbies in the EU mention – beside the possible filling of future court papers asking to be repaid for discriminatory damages – the fear exists that the European employers will suddenly have to pay additional social contributions for employees who have not been entitled to them thus far. The proposed universal full access to equal rights for everyone is a threat to the existing selective principle. Or, is it perhaps, simply the case of a renovated reactionary trend of the enthusiastic public morality defense supported by European neoliberal capitalists and their connections to the Roman Catholic Church? At a crossroads between capitalist and ideological interests, human rights are at stake and ready to be sacrificed easily. Is present-day Europe really so imbued with xenophobia, racism, homophobia and misogyny that every announcement of the possible legislation that would straightforwardly penalize discrimination could shake it from within? The European Commission has obviously estimated that stirring up the hornet’s nest of the buzzing European intolerance, a year before the elections to the European Parliament and Commissioner nominations, would be a highly unpopular move. So let us leave discrimination be, let it live on for people to let off steam, as a punching bag and catharsis of human rage. The rage which is in reality caused by recession, economic and social inequality, social class differences, unjust distribution of basic goods, and not by a caravan of the excluded. Maybe the European Commissioners were disturbed by the fact that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg had recently ruled twice in favor of gay and lesbian rights – against Germany (the right to a deceased partner’s pension) and France (the right to adopt children). If this goes on, the disturbing minorities will start eating into the profit and privileges of the majority. Each well-off capitalist takes this as an obstruction in the system and reason for alert. Losing profit must be stopped, while there is still time. The European Commission’s move vehemently reveals the full extent of hierarchy in the field of human rights in the European Union; we are so far from the principle of universality, equality and indivisibility of human rights. All citizens are equal, but certain categories have been thrown out in an old Orwellian manner. And yet the European dictionary is full of words denoting the fight against multiple discrimination and other horizontal priorities. Disconcerting aspects of discrimination, upsetting the European stomach, can easily be crossed out from the annual program, excluded or censored. It is interesting how homosexuality is always included in the list of censored topics. Homosexuality and lesbianism are in the forefront of all censorship. Gays and lesbians are, as a rule, mutilated, second-rate citizens; or simply non-citizens. Censorship of homosexuality, and sexuality in general, has also been successfully performed by Balkan countries or ex-Yugoslav Republics waiting to be accepted or at least invited to join the club of the elite industrialists and mega-capitalists, called the European Union. Moral blamelessness, despite the healthy diet of the fattened double-chinned, has to be defended at all costs; purism disguised by the defense of economic interests is the best move for the perfect control of the vox populi.

Serbia: At the end of 2007, at the European House in Niš, the photography exhibition Queerology was prohibited. It was supposed to be part of a program dedicated to the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All. Head organizer of events Irena Veljković, a member of the Democratic Party, did not allow the exhibition to be put up. Grounds for the prohibition were, according to Veljković, sexually explicit images, which could disturb the visitors, and the attempt to advertise the LGBTQ population. Artistic photography was said to be sadomasochistic and morbid. GSA’s [Gay-straight Alliance empowers youth activists to fight homophobia and transphobia in schools] latest research shows that 70 % of Serbians believe that homosexuality is a disease. The Serbian Orthodox clero-fascist organization “Obraz” has officially threatened the use of violence against homosexual participants of the Eurovision Song Contest.

Croatia: Also in 2007, Croatian lesbian activists were on trial for being “naughty,” as they came too close to the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) building at Markov square, in Zagreb. They were handing out leaflets to the members of the Croatian Parliament as a part of the “We are not homophobic, however…” campaign. Police came and warned them to leave the premises immediately. The Croatian legislation forbids citizens from standing near the building of the Parliament, Constitutional Court or the building of the Government of the Republic of Croatia (they have to keep a distance of a range of 100m!). Lesbians have to be removed using force, if there is no other way. On the other side of the rainbow, there is Dinko Kalinić, the first declared openly-gay politician in Croatia, who decided to enter the elections for the Parliament – in the so-called third constituency, which comprises the Varaždin, Međimurje and Krapina-Zagorje counties in Croatia. He stated in his program that “the family is the source of life,” and that he swears upon “homeland war veterans.” For Kalinić, the left and the right-wing political parties, the Partisans, Ustasha and Chetniks (the latter, both collaborators of the Nazis in the WWII) are the same. So our neighboring country is also being ravaged by homo-conservatism.

Macedonia: One of the few, if not the only, protest against the last year’s all-Macedonian campaign to ban abortion, was the protest organized by MASSO (the Macedonian Association for Free Sexual Orientation). The abortion ban campaign called for outlawing and prohibiting the basic human right to free reproductive choice. It is not unusual, given the context that the Council of Europe adopted the resolution of access to a safe and legal abortion in April 2008 by 102 votes, with 83 against it.

When politics and sexuality, embraced by the Church, appear within the political scene, I keep asking myself: “Which century am I living in and on which continent?” Archbishop of Ljubljana, Alojz Uran, showed the St. Nicholas Cathedral of Ljubljana to Hans-Gert Pöttering, the President of the European Parliament, as part of an official visit in January 2008: “Pöttering took the opportunity to congratulate Slovenia for the EU Presidency and expressed his joy that Slovenia is a free country. He emphasized the vital role of the Catholic Church in Slovenian civil society and that it thus deserves full support to freely carry out its mission of evangelization.”¹ Some time later, The Office for Religious Communities and The Archdiocese of Maribor denounced the erotic artistic duo Eclipse, Ljubljana, claiming that an artistic installation of the Holy Mother of Ptujska gora (mountain) offended religious feelings. If it was stated, several years ago, that the rock band Strelnikoff (Slovenia) offended religious feelings, because the Holy Mother held a rat in her hands, instead of baby Jesus. Now the case with Eclipse’s offense, is that the Holy Mother is nude; very nude and very beautiful. Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, who took the gay activist Kurt Krickler to court several times, because of Krickler’s public statement concerning the Archbishop’s homosexuality, condemned the homoerotic Last Supper in a similar way – an artistic retrospective by Alfred Hrdlicka – as a part of his exhibition in St. Stephen’s Cathedral of Vienna. He characterized the work as blasphemous pornography and a homosexual orgy of the apostles.

Society-cleansing (making it hygienic) is not possible without a thorough purification of the sexual sphere. There is also no room for AIDS. HIV prevention is now in the domain of organizations for promoting monogamy, marriage and abstinence. Meanwhile an AIDS prevention center (that is its full name as well!) – an organization I had never heard of before, even though I am a member of ŠKUC (the Student Culture and Art Center), Ljubljana, the first Slovenian organization ever to start promoting safe sex and AIDS prevention methods – organized a charity event with a meaningful title “Strawberries, chocolate and champagne” in the entertaining waterpark Atlantis in Ljubljana. On the other side of the non-governmental sector, lies a consortium of elite Slovenian NGO’s (a consortium that includes a Jesuit organization and a crypto-party one) that drew up a proposal for the new asylum law.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) presented the award for special achievements. The award winners were Archbishop Desmond Tutu and IBM. The luxurious event immortalized a representative of Christianity, the “institution,” which has been oppressing homosexuals for two thousand years, and a multinational corporation, which embodies all the misery of the neocolonial exploitation by the Western World. Here we are again, back at the umbilical cord connecting human rights, Church ideology and worldly capital.

Tatjana Greif holds a PhD in archaeology. She is a lesbian activist, publicist, editor of the book ŠKUC – Vizibilija and the Journal for Critique of Science.

Translated from Slovenian by Aida Lončarević.

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