Intro
The Summer Top Reading List of Ljubljana’s Oton Župančič Library recommends in 3rd place the Italian poet Gabriel D’Annunzio, a devoted nationalist and the front man of the propagandistic rhetoric against the Eastern European culture of originality and man, Mussolini’s mentor for the techniques of fascist dictatorship. Perhaps they should have added a footnote that the 3rd ranked D’Annunzio characterized the Slavic neighbours on the other side of the Soča River as “the dangerous barbarians” while waiting for the day when the barbaric blood would colour the Soča in red.1 The Slovene media reported widely on the Pope’s visit to Australia, but again failed to mention the demonstrations against the Pope. On 19th July 2008, over 500 protestors against the Vatican’s policy of contraception, abortion and homosexuality gathered. Wearing costumes of nuns, monks and the devil, they were distributing condoms to the faithful exclaiming: “The Pope is lying! Use a condom!”

Antagonisms
I would like to see the 0.05% of Slovene population, or rather the 1000 Eurobarometer respondents thanks to whom the press agency vehemently concludes that “Slovenians’ confidence in the EU remains stable and the support of European policies has increased. Among 27 member states, Slovenia is the strongest supporter of the European Monetary Union and of the continuation of the Union’s expansion. The report also notes an increase of satisfaction with life.“2 71% of respondents feel that EU membership is of benefit to the country. 73% of respondents feel that Slovenia’s voice in the EU counts. 66% of them trust the EU. As much as 89% of respondents are satisfied with their lives. The support of European policies remains high. The support of economic and monetary policies places Slovenia at the top of list with 90%. 62% of respondents believe that the euro guarantees the country greater economic stability. The common foreign policy of the member states is supported by 82% of respondents, while 87% are in favour of the common defence and security policies. The spring report also mentions an increase in support of EU expansion that 74% agree with. 59% of respondents think that the EU is heading in the right direction and thus 74% of them are optimistic about the future. In short, confidence in EU is way above the European average. Once again, Slovenia has managed to climb to the top. It is almost like in the world of sports – no mountain is too high and river too long for us to conquer. Why, then, do the same respondents think that the economic situation is worse than in the rest of the European Union (70%), that the cost of living in Slovenia is higher than in the EU (79%), that a decrease of buying power has been detected (52%), and why do 59% of them experience problems with paying their monthly bills?

Even though the level of violence against sexual orientation minorities in European practice is increasing, the official statistics testify to the contrary. On the “most unpopular” charts, homosexuals have now been overtaken by the elderly. The Eurobarometer public survey therefore informs us that citizens of the EU would prefer to have a homosexual as a country’s leader rather than someone they deemed too old. Only 17% of the total of 27,000 respondents from all over the EU said that they would be more satisfied if their country was lead by someone older than 75. A lot more, 36% would be happier if their president was a homosexual. Nowadays, only three EU countries are presided over by a person over the age of 75: the Greek president Karolos Papulias (79), Lithuania’s Valdas Adamkus (81), and Italy’s Giorgio Napolitano (83). At the same time only a handful of respondents from Greece and Italy said that they would be perfectly satisfied with an older president. Not only has discriminatory prejudice against various vulnerable groups seen a great increase, there has also been an emergence of new targets – currently under attack is old age. As much as 61% of EU citizens reveal a hostile viewpoint towards the elderly. 45% of Europeans are disturbed by people with a disability! Ethnic minorities experience a high degree of intolerance – 61%, and gay and lesbian people – 53%. The ever more active bearers of violence and discrimination are teenagers, however, the violence can often be packaged in the deceivingly tolerant pop culture, the trivial commercial industry, and other strategies of capitalist megaconsumerism. There is currently a disturbing tendency of growing anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism in Europe, and usual victims of these are foreigners, the Roma people, and the disabled. There are only two countries in the EU that formally keep statistics of racism- Finland and Great Britain. At approximately the same time as the Eurobarometer was finding out the percentage of people who are phobic against old people, the court of justice in Athens (in the “Old Europe continent”), rejected a lawsuit by the inhabitants of the island Lesbos against the gay and lesbian society OLKE. Three islanders were suing a non-governmental organisation for using and appropriating the term “lesbian” for which they suffered disdain. The locals are upset by the fact that the cliff Eressos, from which, allegedly, the Antiquity poetess Sappho threw herself into death, has become too popular a tourist spot. The court’s decision was that the term “lesbian” does not define a status, and the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos therefore do not have the legal foundation for a lawsuit.

The most recent report of Vienna’s European Agency for Fundamental Rights claims that discrimination against gay men, lesbians and transgendered people does exist. The report merely confirms what non-governmental organisations have been declaring for years. The Agency immediately called for greater legal protection of sexual orientation minorities in the field of partnerships (freedom of movement, uniting of families) and in cases of hostile verbal treatment, which demands a uniform regulation at the level of criminal legislation of the EU. A good example of hostile verbal treatment is British Member of Parliament Iris Robinson, the wife of the Northern Irish Prime Minister, who in July of this year managed to upset the public on two occasions: first by saying that gays and lesbians should be medically treated with the “Born-Again Christian” method, and then by asserting that only homosexuality and sodomy were more disgusting than paedophilia. There is straight line leading from hostile speech to hostile action, i.e. to a crime out of hostility. Many political platforms vulgarly abuse people’s prejudice and ignorance for their own propaganda; the governing discourses greatly legitimize violence but are not subject to legal prosecution or sanctions. On 2nd July 2008, only a day after the Agency for Fundamental Rights’ report was made public (what an interesting coincidence), the European Commission announced the acceptance of the agreement for a general parallel directive to protect the rights of all vulnerable groups. In May 2008 this same directive, that was in the past favourable to protect the rights of disabled people, had been removed. The May withdrawal was reportedly carried out to avoid reproaches of provoking the public in anticipation of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the result of which was, in the end, negative. International organisations for human rights called for the 27 leaders of the member states to unanimously vote in favour of the directive; for the parallel anti-discriminative directive to be accepted, all member states must give their consent, but each member has the right to veto.

As far as homo-politics are concerned, the European Commission included in the horizontal directive the prohibition of discrimination against gays and lesbians in the area of accessibility to public services (e.g. health services), social security, education, and residence and commercial services, but overlooked marriage and reproduction rights- this is why gay and lesbian couples still remain neglected. The European Commission public relations representative, Katharina von Schnubein, said that the Commission is not authorised for judicially regulating marriages, as this falls into the framework of national legislation, and stressed that ”marriage is not a service”. Marriage may not be a service, but an equal approach to merchandise and services depends heavily on wedlock – from the status of next of kin and acknowledgement of children, to the status of a family. The next weak point of the proposed new directive is that sexual orientation is more and more becoming an unprotected category in the EU legislation. Currently, the EU generally forbids only racial discrimination, while discrimination on the basis of age, sexual orientation, disability and religion is strictly forbidden only in employment. It is surely more convenient for EU institutions to be occupied with prices of mobile telephones rather than dealing with the intolerance of their own national structures. On July 8th 2008, not long after the move of the European Commission, a move from the Council of Europe followed. For the first time in the 60 years of the Council of Europe, the foreign ministers of 47 member states announced the instalment of a special declaration in support of sexual orientation and sexual identity and the establishment of a cross-government expert group in the field of GLBT.

Parading
Last year’s optimistically announced Pride Parade in Sarajevo, which was supposed to take place in Freedom Square or at Skenderija, never happened. The organisers, interestingly, ruled out the option of holding the event at Sarajevo’s old inner city Baščaršija, as the location cannot “put up with such a manifestation.” For the sake of precaution, the Belgrade Pride Parade never happened as well. At a press conference, Serbian activists announced the beginning of negotiations with the authorities for the 2009 Pride Parade and demanded safety from the police and the government. Dragana Vučković, an activist from Labris, the organisation for lesbian and human rights from Belgrade, warned that the “political elite in Serbia are not aware that sexual orientation is an individual’s fundamental right“. The president of the clergy-fascist organisation Obraz, Mladen Obradović, braggingly disclosed in the media that he participated in the violent shattering of the Pride Parade in 2001 and threatened that he would not allow the ”promotion of the monstrous and degenerate values on the streets of Belgrade” this year. The Russian activists announced that their next year’s Pride Parade will be held on June 16th, the day when Moscow will be hosting the Eurovision Song Contest final.

The wave of parading that has seized Europe washed up the wrecks of violence on its Eastern shores while the West of Europe was marching for a commercial profit, filling up the capitalists’ till. In Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cuba, and in India, the Pride Parades were organised for the first time this year and the reactions to them were hostile in all of the countries- there were Molotov cocktails flying through the air, bottles, rocks, eggs filled with acid and firecrackers. The police were forced to use tear gas and water cannons. In India the participants wore masks. In Sofia, where a mere 150 participated in the event, the police arrested over 60 violent people who were carrying slogans: “Be intolerant, be normal!” There were about 50 arrests and more than 20 casualties in Budapest. The Hungarian Minister of Jurisdiction, Tibor Drašković, determined that the attacks were the result of a well-organised group of extremists, but were directed mostly towards the police. Why then, were so many participants and journalists beaten up? Even before the parade wave, the European Parliament warned Croatia to ensure the safety of the participants, even though Croatia is one of the few countries that actually sanctions homophobic extremists. Last year’s wrongdoers have already been sent to serve their sentence, and not long after this year’s parade the police arrested the attackers and initiated criminal procedures against offences motivated by hatred. Cultural differences in the typology of the Pride Parades are becoming more and more obvious. The more mature the movement, the more protesting and the less parading it experiences. This year’s 30th Berlin Pride Parade warned about the problem of homosexual violence, while the one in Paris, with a million participants, criticised violence in schools, racism, and xenophobia among young people.

If Eastern Pride Parades still merrily applaud speakers from political parties, politicians are much less popular in the West. At the London Pride Parade, participants were brandishing placards of the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wearing make-up and nail varnish: “President of Iran. Murderer. Homophobe,” adding “My penis is this big.” The participants of the London Parade loudly booed the Labour Party MP Harriet Harman, who left the main stage horrified. The crowd ferociously expressed their anger over the Labour Party’s migration policy, which, despite calls for a moratorium, carries out deportations of asylum seekers to homophobic countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Iran, Iraq, and Belarus. British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith defends the standpoint that “there is no risk for those gays and lesbians who are discreet about their sexual orientation”. A similar policy was adopted by the supposedly highly developed Sweden; their Immigration Office introduced a rule that Iranian homosexuals will have an option to be granted asylum in Sweden only if they have been outed as homosexuals in Iran. In both cases we may observe the unprecedented “Go home and be discreet!” policy, which offers the persecuted a life in the underground comparable to that of the Jews under Nazism. I wonder if the Swedish deportations are carried out by SAS, the first European airline to have introduced a special website for the gay market. Is the pink economy the marketing niche of migration policy? Meanwhile, the shopkeepers, hoteliers, and other tourist workers in Copenhagen are getting ready for the gay Olympiad World Out Games 2009- another commercial illusion about equality.

Endurance
In July the Ombudsman representative in Radio Slovenia’s programme Studio at 17h declared that the violence during this year’s Pride Parades across Europe, including the one in Ljubljana, was not a consequence of organised attacks. On the same programme, the representative of the ILGA-Europe explained that violence against gays and lesbians in the EU was in stagnation. According to the German non-governmental organisation Maneo, which specialises in preventing homophobic violence, the violence against gays in Germany has risen by 40% in the last year. The measured degree of violence against GLBT in Liverpool, according to the data from the British police, is 59%, and in London it is 47%. On average, every 5th gay or lesbian in Great Britain is a victim of violence. Among reasons for homophobic violence are patriarchal patterns, machismo and homophobic religious education in schools. On the tiny island of Cyprus, as many as 73% of inhabitants express hostile views on gays and lesbians. After being attacked by a group of neo-Nazis, a Moldovan lesbian activist called the police and an officer’s response was: “We understand you were attacked, but what do you want from us now?”. In Istanbul, a 26-year-old Physics student, Ahmet Yildiz, died because he was homosexual. He was allegedly killed in broad daylight on June 15th 2008 by his own relatives. A Kurdish family from Eastern Anatolia could not come to terms with their son’s coming-out in a published article- afterwards, death threats ensued he was killed for violation of the family’s honour. He was buried in an anonymous grave. On August 2nd 2008, 18-year-old Michael Cause died after being in a coma for several days following a brutal beating in a street. It is noteworthy to point out that the media tried to conceal the last two cases, while in the Turkish case even the police acted insidiously.

What the ”moral women“ say
Marjan Jerman, a journalist from a popular free newspaper, tried to portray this year’s Pride Parade as intolerant. Jerman believes ”these people“ have themselves to blame for the incidents- for instance, they provoke with placards such as ”Proud to be gay“. This, according to Jerman, incites intolerance and hatred. ”Is it really necessary to show oneself and write on placards ‘happy to be gay’ and the like? I am happy not to be gay, but I don’t organise a parade at which I could wear a sign saying ‘Happy not to be gay’“. And he continues: ”How foolish would it be, for example, if prostitutes organised a Pride Parade in a desire to point out their position in society and would march with banners like ‘Happy to be a prostitute’…”. The author is worried what the ”situated and moral women“ would say about the Parade, ”Perhaps we are not mature enough to be able to accept these people in a normal way”.3 A columnist for the same newspaper, Miha Šalehar, expresses a similar concern: ”The pink championship and resembling manifestations may thus easily turn out to be spitting in one’s own face as regards those who are ‘different’… demonstrating love preferences as the only parameter that defines someone can quickly outgrow into ‘screwing’ a sane mind“. Šalehar says that Slovenia has ”three celebrity homosexuals whose clown-like accounts make the people realize how backward they are. “4 The simplistic logic of such journalism requires no comment except perhaps a primary school history lesson in universal civilizational principles which were fought for several centuries ago – the Declaration of Human Rights (1789), which, among other statements, asserts: “Freedom is in doing everything that does not harm others,” and states that other human rights include the right to peaceful assembly and rebellion against tyranny. Perhaps the time gap or a retarded mentality is a cause of the judicial and legislative shuffling along, hesitation and threat of safety; Slovenia does not possess the legislative regulation of hostile speech or hate crimes.

Patriarchate
In her Everybody’s Autobiography from 1937, Gertrude Stein writes: “There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing. Everybody nowadays is a father, there is father Mussolini and father Hitler and father Roosevelt and father Stalin and father Lewis and father Blum and father Franco is just to be conceived now and there are ever so many more ready to be conceived as well.”5 It could be written in 2008 or in any other year.

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, Ljubljana.

Translated from Slovenian by Jernej Možic.

[top]