Gay march protests in Budapest

June 2nd, 2010, 15:40 | 3 comments

Martin Passoli over at HungaryGay offers an explanation to why gay pride marches are met by protests  in Budapest nowadays, whereas they were totally accepted in the first years. He writes (scroll down on his site for the post):

I attended my first gay march in 2001. Then there were no disruptions to the event, no protests against it, it was all peaceful and cheerful. At the time when gay organisations in other Eastern block countries were still fighting to be given the right to march, the Budapest march used to be an incredible parade. But jealousy is there in all of us. A straight community that sees thousands of happy, careless gays occupying the streets of the capital does get jealous.

I think he has a point, but one should also not forget that these protests started in countries which have more problems with homophobia than Hungary, and are now spreading as a sort of trend. And Hungary is, as Martin points out, “torn between East and West” in this respect. Not as poor and homophobic as the Eastern countries, but also not as rich and openminded as the Western ones.

I’ve attended a Budapest gay pride march too. It was in 2002 and it was a lovely event with lots of participants and lots of companies who wanted to be seen in this setting – I remember Fanta handing out free bottles from their float. No protesters were seen at all. In 2008, only six years later, The Guide reported on the clashes in Budapest and other Central European cities. I was asked for a comment in their article, which ended like this:

In Brno on June 28, the Czech Republic’s first-ever pride march faced an assault by dozens of neo-Nazis that left 20 of the 500 gay demonstrators injured. Police and the extremists clashed for some 45 minutes at the end of the parade route, and some 15 were arrested.

Does the greater tolerance evident in this year’s somewhat more peaceful prides in Moscow, Warsaw, and Bucharest meant that anti-gay sore spot is shifting Westward?

Not necessarily, says Karl Anderson, editor of the Prague-based gay magazine Destroyer, who contends this year’s violence in the Czech Republic and Hungary doesn’t have deep roots.

“Unlike what had happened in Poland and Russia, the parade wasn’t attacked by regular citizens, but by extremists,” Anderson says. “These countries have a tradition of being open-minded and secularized. The attacks don’t reflect attitudes at large.”

At least they didn’t. I think part of the positive atmosphere back in 2002 was due to the fact that Hungary still hadn’t joined the EU, but was on its way to do so. That gave people hope, and the early gay marches therefore became a symbol for the switch from East to West. They were an exotic and appreciated part of the new life – welcoming them was a way of shaping up for the awaiting EU entry. When things didn’t change for the better as radically as people maybe hoped, disappointment spread. That might be one reason why people object to gay pride marches today when they didn’t ten years ago.



Category: English, Politics
Tags: ,

Comments

3 responses to “Gay march protests in Budapest”

  1. math
    June 4th, 2010, 18:56

    shitty

  2. erik
    June 6th, 2010, 12:47

    cool i remember your drawing of the dogs! its back into your header design.

  3. Karl
    June 6th, 2010, 16:58

    Yes, aren’t they sweet?

Leave a reply