Marek Mikuš

FIELD NOTES FRAGMENT: QUEERS AND PRIESTS

(…) As the second Belgrade Pride Parade approached the Vaznesenjska crkva (The Ascension Church) in Kneza Miloša Boulevard, mid-way to its destination in the Student Cultural Centre, the crowd got somewhat louder and rowdier. I soon learned what induced their derisive shouting and wolf-whistling. At the gate of the churchyard, behind the fence, a small group of mostly middle-aged men silently stood, headed by an Orthodox priest holding up a large wooden cross. His dour face, hard look and pressed lips made the meaning of his gesture clear – he was guarding the holy lands against the imminent contamination by sin. However, the paraders were eager to demonstrate their upper hand.

In the fleeting moment of a victorious sensation, it was easy to give in and forget the real-world conditions under which this momentary reversal of the balance of forces in Serbian socio-political landscape occurred. The section of Belgrade down-town in which the Pride Parade was able to safely complete its šetnja (walk) was hermetically closed, patrolled by a helicopter and encircled by thousands of policemen, gendarmes and military policemen. Only a few hundred yards away, mobs of young men were trying to break the blockade in heavy fights in which more than 100 people, mostly police, got injured. However, unlike in 2001 when fourteen participants of the first Pride Parade were estimated to be seriously injured, this time the state endeavored much harder to demonstrate its muscle power and ability to enforce rule of law and public order. The blockade weathered the onslaught, and scores of what the media branded as huligani (hooligans), ekstremisti (extremists) and izgrednici (disturbers), but also more neutrally as protivnici povorke (the Parade’s opposers) and demonstranti (demonstrators), were arrested. Some government officials, including President Tadić, rushed to exploit the opportunity in the media and, presumably addressing those in Serbia flirting with undermining the state as well as the international community, to weave together the governmental-technological rhetoric of the state’s monopoly of power with the high discourse of liberalism, democracy and human rights. Belgradians, disgruntled by the disruption and resulting material damage in the heart of their city, were mostly rather unimpressed and either called for stronger repression or condemned the parade as the cause of the trouble.

The scene at the church entrance further illustrates the enduring political and cultural polarization of Serbian society which the pride, owing to the way was executed, helped to materially objectify and forcefully visualise rather than question or reduce. Although the governing Democratic Party’s spokeswoman subsequently insisted that the mob had no ideology at all, this very episode, as well as the involvement of the Serbian Orthodox Church and major far-rights movements such as Obraz and Naši 1389 in organizing and legitimating the attempted carnage, speak to the contrary. As nebulous and vague the ideology may appear, to the hooligans’ minds a chain of well-established and naturalised conceptual associations linked, on the one hand, the LGBT rights movement with all foreign and sick elements threatening the Serbian body ethnonational and, on the other, the Orthodoxy with conservative nationalism and hegemonic heterosexual masculinity, and opposed the two mental constellations to each other. How else can we explain their appeals ‘Kraljevina Srbija, idite na Kosovo!’ (‘The Kingdom of Serbia, go to Kosovo!’) in a context where they could be more obviously expected to only vow ‘Jebaćemo pedere!” (‘We’ll fuck the faggots!’)? Or, on the other side of the church fence, how should we interpret the calls of the parade’s supporters (or, at least, those disgusted by the mob violence), in the internet and real-world discussions, to ‘arrest the priests’? (…)