Pride Parades and/or Prayer Processions: Contested Public Space in Serbia #Belgrade Pride 2014

Abstract

In post-Yugoslav countries, national identity seems to be increasingly defined by the formulation of a traditional discourse on sexuality and gender, culminating in a growing interference of religious institutions with national debates and policies on LGBTrights. In this paper we aim to gain more insight into the discursive effects of such sexual nationalist discourse by exploring responses of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the 2014 Belgrade Pride parade. Drawing from theories on religious and sexual nationalism and queer geography, we will argue that while the Serbian Orthodox discourse on homosexuality is becoming more secular, this secularization of public speech is compensated by a strategy of reclaiming the streets of Belgrade through politically charged public religious ritual. As the church is in this way making its anti-LGBT attitude physical and visible, Serbian citizens are increasingly requested to agree to Church teachings on sexuality and gender as a prerequisite for religious participation, resulting in an increasing divide between those "within" and "without" the community of Orthodox Serbs.

Sveto i svetogrđe u postsekularnom svetu

“…Homofobija se sve više vidi kao religijski, ili konkretnije, islamski problem, od kog sekularno društvo navodno više ne pati (Verkaaik and Spronk 2011, 85-86). Sličan diskurs može se uočiti i u državama bivšeg Sovjetskog bloka gde se katolicizam ili pravoslavlje uvezuje sa posebno homofobnim pristupom, pa i u bivšoj nesvrstanoj, postsocijalističkoj Srbiji, posebno u vezi sa Paradama ponosa (v. Igrutinović 2015;Igrutinović et al 2015).…”

Orthodox actors and equal opportunities policies in the Republic of Moldova in the context of the transformation of post-Soviet societies

“…Pride marches have been held in Chișinău since 2013. They are not large, but they are symbolically significant, as they are in all post-socialist countries; these processions, heavily guarded by the police, have already attracted academic attention in the field of what might be called 'Pride studies' (see, e.g., Drissel 2016;Igrutinović et al 2015).…”