Amid threats of mass-staged protests and opposition from political and religious quarters, Bulgaria will see its first ever gay parade on June 28 in Sofia.
After the announcement of the event, the right-wing Bulgarian National Union (BNU) reacted with a news conference on June 22, where it declared a Week of Intolerance. The union has vowed to organise a counter-event on the day of the parade, a protest against “homosexuals advertising themselves on the streets,” Boyan Rassate, BNU leader, told The Sofia Echo on June 25.
On the party’s official website, a sign reads “Be intolerant, be normal.” It accompanies a statement explaining that instead of bringing prosperity and security, the difficult transitional years the country was still going through, have brought about misery, poverty and “epidemic-high levels of homosexuality and paedophilia.” Rassate said that in every Bulgarian political party there were gays and paedophiles, except in the ranks of BNU. Asked whether he was trying to politicise the issue, Rassate denied it.
“What bothers me is that too many gays and paedophiles are penetrating the Bulgarian institutions,” he said. That way, he said, they give protection to the Bulgarian gay organisations, which dare to hold “criminal and questionable campaigns.”
The Pride is initiated and organised by the Bulgarian gay organisation Gemini, and it is planned to begin at the National Palace of Culture at 4pm. Its motto is “Me and my family.” June 28 1969 was the day on which the Stonewall riots began in New York, which are generally considered to be the beginning of the modern-day gay rights movement.
“What is quite worrisome in this case is not what Boyan Rassate is saying, without backing it with any facts,” Aksinia Gencheva, executive director of Gemini, told The Sofia Echo. “It is sad that he could actually find a platform from which to disperse his fascist-like propaganda.”
Gencheva said that all the opponents of the gay parade now and in the past practiced double standards. She said that in 2005, when there was a plan to hold a Pride in the city of Varna, clergy from the local branch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church initiated a massive public debate and institutional uproar to the extent that the event fell through.
“Back then, two weeks before the church announced that homosexuality was a breach of morality, Varna hosted an international porno festival,” Gencheva said.
The metropolitanate of Varna and Veliki Preslav also denounced the gay parade as immoral and an attempt to change traditional family values, zagrada.bg reported.
“We are not judging or despising those people, we condemn the sin of homosexuality and its scandalous advertising,” the metropolitanate’s statement read.
People are free to choose their sexual orientation, but it is not acceptable to demonstrate it with parades, Vlado Lalov, a member of the youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Bulgarian party Ataka, told The Sofia Echo.
“Europe is founded on Christian values and it has to stay this way,” Lalov said. “If we sit back and just watch, what is to happen next? Sooner or later, gays will want to have ceremonial church marriages, or to adopt children. What kind of family would that be?”
Gencheva said that the BNU had threatened open violence during the parade. She said that the police had been alerted.
“It is really important for the people taking part in the parade not to give in to this provocation,” Gencheva said.
