President Vucic: Union of marriage is between man and woman
The Serbian opposition fiercely objects to the pan-European LGBTQ festival. They say they do not want Belgrade to become a capital promoting homosexuality and pornography. The Dveri Movement party submitted a bill to parliament for the banning of advertising homosexual content to children. Event organisers expect the festival to help strengthen the LGBTQ+ community in the Western Balkans, and believe that it would help Serbia take a step towards European values.
Organisers want to strengthen the LGBTQ+ community in the Balkans
EuroPride will be hosted this year in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The city won the right to host the event ahead of Western European capitals such as Barcelona, Lisbon and Dublin. EuroPride is a pan-European LGBTQ event, hosted by a different city each year. The host city is usually a place with a well-established pride event or a significant LGBTQ community. The first such festival was held in 1992, and Belgrade will be its first host city outside the European Economic Area (EEA). The event will be held between 12 and 18 September, with organiser Goran Miletic saying that some 20 thousand foreigners are expected to visit Belgrade during that time, along with some 15 high-ranking officials of the European Union.
Preparations are progressing at an excellent pace, Mr Miletic said, and compared the scope of the work to that achieved for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest in Serbia.
Photo: prajd.rs
Photo: Instagram
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic has attended the Pride Parade in Belgrade on several occasions. As an openly homosexual politician, Ms Brnabic attended the 2019 event, for example, with her partner Milica Durdicty.
Photo: Instagram
The PM wrote under the photos published on her Instagram page: „We are building a society together whose core values are tolerance, understanding and support for minorities.”
Opposition parties do not support the procession
While the Serbian premier does not hide her homosexuality and directly supports the parade, right-wing parties, which gained strength at the April elections, sharply criticised EuroPride being hosted by Belgrade. The right-wing parties collected 18 per cent of the votes in total, as earlier also reported by V4NA.
Photo: Facebook
The leader of the Dveri party, which has surpassed the parliamentary threshold, said that once the house of representatives is formed, they will submit a bill which would ban promoting homosexual content to minors. They also suggest that the government ban the Pride Parade for 100 years. Party President Bosko Obradovic said that the development of small children must be prevented from being influenced by such events.
„We simply cannot accept for a child to have two fathers, or for small children to feel that they are boys in the morning but girls in the afternoon. We don’t want Belgrade to be a capital promoting homosexuality, pornography and other perversions that we can see in these mass events of homosexuals around the world,” the politician wrote in a statement.
Staging the Pride parade in Belgrade also poses security and health risks, Bosko Obradovic added. For that reason alone, it should be cancelled.
„The Dveri Serb movement will use all peaceful and democratic opportunities within and outside of the parliament to get the shameful September event planned in the capital, cancelled” the party president said.
„It cannot be a coincidence that Western power centres around the world keep hoisting LGBT flags on their embassies. It is obviously a new totalitarian ideology with which they want to dominate the world,” Mr Obradovic says.
Equal rights also for heterosexuals
Another party in the Belgrade parliament, the Democratic Party of Serbia is also against the gay pride parade in Belgrade. Party chair Milos Jovanovic said that equal treatment is guaranteed by law for everyone in the country, regardless of their sexual orientation, adding that no one has the right to force their own choice on others, especially not sexual minorities, who should not be allowed to aggressively promote their own.
It is clear that the aim of the September EuroPride is to bring the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Serbia before the legislature again, Mr Jovanovic opined. Serbian democrats will definitely fight against this in the parliament, the chairman added.
Pressure weighs on Serbia
In recent years, there has been a strong demand from gay rights NGOs for Serbia to adopt a law regulating same-sex marriage. As a country aspiring to join the European Union, it is striving to meet international standards. However, the EU has not made such legislation a condition for accession. Nevertheless, Belgrade has adopted a national action plan to reduce discrimination in the Balkan state. This includes a commitment to have a law passed by parliament by October 2019 to regulate same-sex partnerships.
The closest Serbia has come to adopting such a law was in 2021, when the Ministry of Minorities and Human Rights drafted a bill, which was never submitted to the government. This is because the Serbian president has stated that even if the parliament were to pass such a law, he would not sign it. As President of the Republic he must defend the Constitution, Mr Vucic argued.
„The Constitution settles the issue through the Family Law Act which states that a man and a woman can marry. That is why I could not sign this legislation. If such a law is passed, I would immediately send it back to the parliament,” the president explained.
His own personal position on the law is there for all to see, as he appointed Ana Brnabic as prime minister, Mr Vucic added. However, he insisted that despite this, he is by no means an ardent advocate of same-sex unions, adding that he is not interested in what one side or the other says about the law, but he wants Serbia to be a modern and normal country where the rule of law is respected.
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europride, gay pride, serbia
