The gay parade – who needs it?

Today, for the tenth consecutive year, the so-called "Sofia Pride", better known in ordinary Bulgarian as the "gay parade", is being held in Sofia. And this year, like every other, this event has caused stormy and contradictory reactions and public disputes. Many people do not understand the meaning of the gay parade. Many consider it extremely harmful. Many consider it extremely necessary. Where is the truth? Here is my two cents on the matter.

How NOT to achieve tolerance

There is no way to seek and build tolerance and continuity by demonstrating and parading differences. By manifesting what you know for sure that other people find strange, incomprehensible and alien to themselves. Here I am addressing directly the organizers of Sofia Pride and LGBT activists in Bulgaria. If you want to convince society that people with different sexual orientations (this also applies to any other differences, including religious, ethnic, etc.) deserve the same rights and treatment as everyone else, then you should focus not on what distinguishes you from the wider part of society, but on what unites you with it.

I am a heterosexual man. To me, on a purely instinctive level, homosexuality is incomprehensible. So please, don't focus on the incomprehensible aspects of your life when you try to convince me that you are like me and deserve to be treated like I treat everyone else. Instead, why don't you invite me for a beer? Watch a game? In short, do something that unites and unites us. Not something that demonstrates and bruises me how different you are from me. That way you won't convince me to support your cause.

Why? Not because I'm homophobic. But because there's no connection on a personal level. The more you focus on what makes you different from me, the more those aspects of your life completely consume your personality in my eyes. You become a stereotype for me, not another human being who I can get to know as a person and whose dreams, emotions, and fears I can understand and relate to.

Every time you go to a demonstration, the sole purpose of which is to demonstrate how different you are from me, this in no way brings us closer. On the contrary, it distances us even more. Because you emphasize what makes you different from me. And that is why with each passing year homosexuals become more and more alien to heterosexuals. And that is why intolerance against them grows. What LGBT activism has proven itself most capable of is creating precisely these harmful stereotypes, which it then tries to fight.

The aggressive goals of LGBT activism

The confrontational nature of the gay pride parade is symptomatic of the approach of LGBT activism in Bulgaria as a whole. Copying the Western model, it is aggressive and even openly authoritarian in its demands. Let's look at some of the goals of Sofia Pride and what they would mean for society.

On the official website of the event, the first goal is listed as:

" Introduction into the Criminal Code of qualified sections for crimes committed with homophobic or transphobic motives (based on sexual orientation and gender identity or gender expression). This is necessary due to the specific features and increased public danger of this type of crime, similar to the special sections for acts committed with racist and xenophobic motives. "

This first goal is already extremely worrying. In practice, it seeks to create a protected group by law. It seeks to treat criminal acts against homosexuals in a special way and, accordingly, to punish them more severely by law. Otherwise, what is the point of categorizing them differently? This is an extremely dangerous idea, because it violates the most fundamental principle in the administration of justice – equality before the law. No matter what your gender, ethnicity or sexuality, the judicial system must treat everyone the same. This is precisely why Themis is always depicted as blind – because true justice requires blindness to any such differences.

Furthermore, another goal of Pride is the "condemnation" by politicians of "hate speech" against people of different sexual orientations. This demand is formulated too vaguely to be sure what it means exactly. Of course, hardly any well-mannered and civilized person would not condemn hateful and disgusting speech. But is this kind of "condemnation" in question or "condemnation" in the literal sense of the law? That is, turning insulting homosexuals into a crime?

Judging by my experience with LGBT activists, the activities of organizations that "protect" their rights, such as the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, are most likely about the second, literal type of condemnation. This is another extremely problematic goal, which, if achieved, would have a catastrophic effect on freedom of speech. Speech is not violence. Speech should not be a crime. The legal framework of a truly free society should tolerate any speech (except perhaps that which openly encourages violence). Because one of the most fundamental forms of freedom is the freedom to publicly express what you think. If this freedom is limited, then this means that all other freedoms are in mortal danger.

My "normality" is better than your "normality"

But of all the demands of the Pride, the most talked about is the legalization of gay marriage (civil marriage for homosexuals) and the adoption of children by homosexuals. I personally am not against homosexuals being able to enter into civil marriage, nor being able to adopt. The only conditionality to the latter for me is that I believe that heterosexual families should always have priority in adoption over everyone else. Why?

As we know, there is such a thing as a "natural" or "normal" family, which is widely accepted by society, or at least by the heterosexual majority. Again, this is not some unfounded whim of the "far right". It is obvious that on a purely biological level the natural family is heterosexual and consists of a mother, father and child. Not least because alternative family structures are incapable of reproducing naturally. After the human individual himself, the heterosexual family is the most basic social unit. Human society and civilization grew naturally from this unit. And so it is not at all surprising that many people are alarmed when it seems to them that the natural and traditional family is under some kind of "attack".

This mass concern may be an expression of delusion and unjustified hysteria, but it's strange why I haven't seen any LGBT activists come out and say "no, we don't want to attack the natural family structure at all". Because right now, the perception among the general public is that what is sought is not just tolerance towards homosexuals and their families, but also the imposition of their sexuality and family as the "new normal". This scares people who are part of the "old normal".

And so, for me, a completely unfounded conflict arises between the two groups. Because the conversation about tolerance and harmonious coexistence in society turns into a dispute about cultural and social dominance. And this dispute does not subside, but only escalates over the last decade, during which the gay pride parade has become a regular event and LGBT activism has enjoyed more and more attention from the media and public mainstream.

LGBT organizations and activists seem to be becoming increasingly aggressive in their rhetoric and attempts to impose their view of "normal" on heterosexuals. The opposite also happens, and both groups are playing each other off. The problem is that what the two groups understand by "normal" is fundamentally different precisely because of their radically different sexualities. Trying to force the other side to accept your view of "normal" is like forcibly imposing your worldview on them. This is a recipe for social tension.

How can we reach an understanding?

Instead, the path to achieving harmony and understanding between homosexuals and heterosexuals is by emphasizing what unites us. By emphasizing not on the fundamental differences between heterosexuals and homosexuals – sexuality – but on the similarities, all those aspects of worldview and personal life that the two groups share. Because in reality we are not that different. I know homosexual people and I know that on an individual personal level they are not much different from me. But if I were to judge them only by LGBT activism and events like Sofia Pride, these people would seem completely foreign to me.

It seems that LGBT activism in Bulgaria is only capable of emphasizing the differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals and thus only deepening the social division between them to such an extent that it almost grows into an insurmountable chasm. This means that LGBT activism in our country has failed. Catastrophically. And it needs to fundamentally reconsider its approach, because through its aggressive approach it scares otherwise tolerant people and adds fuel to the fire of truly homophobic rhetoric. And so, thanks to it and events like "Sofia Pride", homosexuality is becoming an ever greater scarecrow for the rest of society. So in the end, who needs the gay parade? Nobody. Least of all the homosexuals themselves.

Did you like it? Take a minute to support the EKIP on Patreon!