It was 2001: a new millennium, a new decade after the destruction of the 1990s. There had been an end to the fighting in Croatia, in Bosnia, in Kosovo; the region’s borders were settled, for the time being at least; Slobodan Milošević was heading to the Hague to stand trial. It was the perfect moment, one might think, for Serbia’s historically marginalised communities to emerge from their oppression and play a role in a settled, peaceful and democratic Serbia.
Serbia’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community certainly thought so. In July 2001, they made the brave decision to host Belgrade’s first ever pride parade, an event that they hoped would symbolise how a country that had spent the previous decade riven by extreme religious nationalism could progress, could heal, could forge for itself a new and inclusive future.
Even before the parade, though, it was clear that such healing was far from universal. Nationalist groups leafletted Belgrade, declaring the marchers “degenerates” and “whores”; threats of violence and murder were made against the parade’s organisers. They organisers were unbowed, however. These were precisely the attitudes they were trying to counter: they would not be coerced into halting their march by the very extremists who had marginalised them for so long. There would be an outcry, of course, but wasn’t that inevitable as Serbia came to terms with its own diversity?
Even the most paranoid among the organisers, though, could not have predicted the scale and intensity of the disapproval that lurked within Serbian society. On the day of the parade almost 2,000 thugs converged on the crowd, charging at them with a terrible violence. “Serbia is for Serbians, not for homosexuals!” came the chants, as fists and feet sent the parade scattering, searching in vain for cover.
The police presence was virtually nonexistent: just fifty officers, none of whom were equipped with riot gear, were deployed to protect the parade. When the marchers found sanctuary in the student cultural centre, the building was assailed with a barrage of rocks and concrete; so too was the headquarters of the Socijaldemokratska unija (“Social Democratic Union”) party, one of the few in Serbia that then supported gay rights. Only when the anti-gay protesters turned on them were the police willing to use force.
In the aftermath of the parade and its destruction, the response from Serbia’s politicians and public figures was virtually nonexistent; those who did respond did little to dispel the notion that they, implicitly at the least, sympathised with the actions of the anti-gay protesters.
Boško Buha, Belgrade’s police chief, was forthright in his disapproval: not for those who disrupted the parade with violence, though, but for those who had organised the parade in the first place. “As a society we are not mature enough to accept such demonstrations of perversity,” he said, in a remark that betrayed a distressing self-awareness.
Even Zoran Đinđić, the then-Prime Minister and a centrist, could not bring himself to decry outright the anti-gay forces. “It’s too early to stand this test of tolerance in a country that has been in isolation for so long, and which has… a repressive patriarchal culture,” he said. “I’m afraid it will take us some time to reach [the] highest level of tolerance.”
In 2009, protesters tried for the second time to host a pride parade in Belgrade. The political climate had changed much since 2001: Boris Tadić, the president, was far more moderate and tolerant than the president of the FRY in 2001, Vojislav Koštunica; the wars of the 1990s were less vivid in the public consciousness, and political continuity from the 1990s had essentially faded.
At first, things looked hopeful. Interior minister Ivica Dačić promised publicly that the police would protect the parade and ensure that the events of 2001 were not repeated; Belgrade’s mayor, Dragan Đilas, spoke of the necessity for “everyone to feel safe” in Belgrade, and announced that homophobic graffiti would be targeted for removal by council workers.
As the day of the parade drew closer, though, the situation deteriorated. Posters and graffiti appeared across Belgrade; the most popular slogan bore the ominous warning “We are waiting for you”. Extreme nationalist groups like Obraz and Movement 1389 printed thousands of fliers and posters, and threatened to recreate the events of 2001 in even greater numbers. The church issued a statement comparing the parade to “Sodom and Gomorrah”.
Fearful for public safety, the previously supportive authorities backed down; the event was moved from the centre of Belgrade, which in practical terms meant cancellation. Though no blood was spilled, the anti-gay forces had achieved as decisive victory as in 2001; eight years later, Serbia’s attitudes had not, it seemed, progressed at all.
To understand Serbia’s attitudes towards homosexuality is, ultimately, to understand Serb identity itself. Notions of Serb identity have always formed around the notion that Serbia is an independent and self-reliant bastion, surrounded by perfidious foes—whether those foes were the Ottoman Turks of 1389, the clerical-fascist Croatian Ustaše in World War II, or the Bosniak and Kosovan Muslims in the 1990s. This notion of being surrounded by external enemies means that national identity has typically emphasised Serbia’s own unique features in contrast to its neighbours—i.e. that is ethnically Serb, and that it is religiously Orthodox.
This interweaving of religion and nationalism is as old as Serbia itself: after all, the early rulers of Serbia’s founding Nemanjić dynasty, still revered by Serb nationalists, were all canonised as Orthodox saints as a result of their extensive monastery-building and support for the church. When Serbia was subsumed by the Ottoman Empire, partially absorbed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and when it later became a part of Yugoslavia, the Serb identity no longer had a sovereign state on which to define itself; what remained, though, was the church, and it was through this that Serbs found unity.
The religious nationalism of the late 1980s and early 1990s, then, can be more accurately viewed as a return to the tradition of centuries than an emergence; it is the half-century’s atheism of communist Yugoslavia that is, historically speaking, the aberration. A fundamentally secular country did not turn to religious nationalism; a briefly secular country returned to it.
With the return of such sentiment, there was an inevitable and concomitant rise in homophobia. Homophobia in Serbia is, of course, based partly in the same universal instincts that foster homophobia in every other country in the world, and of course homophobia did not vanish during the godless, Yugoslav era; but the resurgence in religious nationalism in the 1990s undoubtedly brought with it a new wave of homophobia. The Serbian Orthodox Church, with its strong condemnation of homosexuality, returned to the fore of political life; under Patriarch Pavle, politicians actively courted the church and policy fell into line with church dogma in many areas.
The consequences for gay rights were, naturally, negative. As well as quashing any attempt to host a pride parade in Belgrade, legislative attempts to outlaw discrimination also faltered. The initial failure of the 2009 Serbian anti-discrimination bill was due primarily to opposition from the church, and its eventual narrow passage occurred despite the church’s attitude rather than because of it. To Serbia’s credit, the final act’s anti-discrimination provisions are fairly strong:
“Seksualna orijentacija je privatna stvar i niko ne može biti pozvan da se javno izjasni o svojoj seksualnoj orijentaciji.
“Svako ima pravo da se izjasni o svojoj seksualnoj orijentaciji, a diskriminatorsko postupanje zbog takvog izjašnjavanja je zabranjeno.”
[“Sexual orientation shall be a private matter, and no one may be called to declare publicly their sexual orientation.
“Everyone shall have the right to declare their sexual orientation, and discriminatory treatment on the grounds of such declarations shall be forbidden.”]
Unfortunately, though, reality is yet to catch up with legislation. Though officially outlawed, discrimination remains distressingly frequent, and the law can never counter the sort of informal, generalised intimidation that led to the cancellation of the 2009 pride parade. A wholesale change in attitude is necessary, and none seems forthcoming; the church is still unassailable, nationalism still sacred, homophobia still the norm.
The political atmosphere in Serbia, then, is one in which anyone who wishes to be perceived to be concerned with the security of the Serbs cannot be seen to express a pro-gay viewpoint; to do so would be to go against the church and to capitulate to Serbia’s external and internal enemies. This was true in 2001, and it was true in 2009. In 2010, the Serbian minister for Human and Minority Rights, Svetozar Čiplić, has proffered his assurance that a pride parade in Belgrade will go ahead at some point this year; until Serbian attitudes progress and ensure that a pride parade can be enjoyed safely, though, Serbia surely has little to be proud of.
