Sofia's week of intolerance

I am reposting Kyle's impressions of the events that led up to Bulgaria's First Gay Pride Parade with his permission. We talked and lived through a lot of this together and I do not think I could add anything to his story, other than a thank you for his thoughtful write-up:

Scattered impressions from a long, tense week in Sofia:

-Last Sunday, the Bulgarian National Union (БНС)—an ultra-nationalist political organization with no representation in parliament—held a press conference in protest against yesterday's Gay Pride parade, denouncing homosexuality as immoral, and calling for a "Week of Intolerance" under the slogan "Be Intolerant, Be Normal"

-The "debate" over gay rights dominated the news media throughout the week, with some networks hosting news talk shows devoted to the topic every night, featuring such matchups as BNU leader Boyan Rasate (more on him later) vs. our very own Petya Kirilova-Grady. Bulgarian politicians certainly helped to fan the flames of the controversy—Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev voiced his disapproval of "the manifestation and demonstration of such orientations"—while many speculated that the government was simply trying to shift attention away from certain other issues they would prefer not to talk about, like the sales of a state-owned power plant and of 540 hectares of land located within a legally-protected national park, both to individuals with suspected ties to organized crime. (To watch Petya's TV appearance, visit the re:tv archive and selct the video-clip labelled "'Булебард България' от 23-ти юни - 3-та част")

-Members of the right-wing party Ataka began posting comments on their website calling for violence against the participants in the parade. Clearly, some of this was meant merely to intimidate, as similar comments began popping up in forums on the website of Gemini, Bulgaria's largest LGBT organization, detailing plans for building "бомбички" ("little bombs") with nails inside of them and other home-made weapons, and promising to bus violent nationalist protesters from all over the country into Sofia for the day of the parade. Meanwhile, Gemini's executive director, Aksinia Gencheva, received death threats.

-In its first incursion into political life since it decided to call for a boycott of Harry Potter novels, the Bulgarian Orthodox church called for the cancellation of the parade, while denouncing homosexuality as a "sin" and a "disease." From the church's official statement: "Such public appearances promote immorality and try to supplant the established family values. We do not denounce and despise these people but we denounce the sin of homosexuality, and its scandalous advertising."

-Capital, generally one of Bugaria's better newspapers, decided to run this cartoon, without any commentary, as their entire coverage of the controversy surrounding the parade. After receiving letters from disappointed readers, they did issue a weak apology, attributing the view expressed in the cartoon to its author, but failing to explicitly state their own views on these events.

-On Thursday afternoon, two days before the parade, Sofia mayor Boiko Borisov, whose own office initially granted the permit for the parade, announced through the media that the parade would be moved into a park outside of the downtown area, and changed into a "demonstration." Borisov cited safety concerns as the reason behind the change of venue, although it is not exactly evident how a park surrounded by dense woods could be considered an easier place to maintain crowd control and prevent attacks against the demonstrators. In any case, the new location would certainly have meant a much lower profile for the event, and seemed to many people to be nothing more than capitulation to the calls for intolerance and condemnation, most of those based on ridiculous stereotypes and misinformation. After an eleventh-hour meeting with leaders from Gemini and pressure from international human rights organizations, Boiko again reversed his decision, and agreed to let the parade take place in downtown Sofia, albeit on a modified route.

It should go without saying that all of this set up a very tense scene on Saturday. The parade itself, which was marked by confusion, anxiety, and tension, felt more like a final verdict than the main event, and I'm happy to report that in spite of all the negativity that surrounded it, the parade was an unqualified success. Details in another post.

I will repost his entry about the parade itself as soon as it's posted.