PRIDE AND PUNISHMENT: THE CHURCH, THE STATE, AND PRIDE PARADES IN SERBIA (2012-2024)

Abstract

A process of desecularization, sacralizing the nation, and retraditionalizing gender roles
has been ongoing in post-Yugoslav Serbia since the late 80s, but has gained new steam since 2012,
when a new government of a coalition similar to the 1990s politics was formed, albeit this time
with the ostensible aim of joining the EU. Against the backdrop of these processes, Serbian identity
has been constructed in a particularly masculine way. And although the use of homophobia
to Other the ‘Enemy within’ is not new in Serbian nationalism, a notable shift has been observed
as Serbia has been pushed to accept LGBT bodies as part of its Europeanisation process, which is
now further complicated by the war in Ukraine. The pride parades, which Serbia has had to endure
due to its European integration process, and the tactical decision to appoint a lesbian prime minister,
have contributed to the impossibility to openly rely on stereotypical homophobic means of
othering. As such, the focus of the ‘enemy’ within shifted from the homosexual to other ‘Others’:
Albanians, migrants traversing the Balkan route, non-maternal women, and most recently, ‘gender
ideology’ in biology textbooks and gender-sensitive language. Tracing the debates in the Serbian
media, especially with regard to the discursive chasm between LGBT communities/feminisms and
the Serbian Orthodox Church, but also with changes in the dominant media discourse, this paper
contends that nationalist othering in Serbia is consistently reshaped in order to accommodate
the changing political climates. It demonstrates the moving boundaries in the construction of the
nation, which constantly fluctuating representations of identities stereotypically associated with
LGBT communities, masculinities and femininities, ‘Serbhood’, and Orthodoxy.