English 2013

Pride Week from 8.6. – 15.6., with the Parade on Saturday 15th June. The whole program will be published shortly.

Message for 2013: Freedom and Solidarity are a Same-Gender Couple

It seems it is never the right time to demand unconditional equality. With the on-going financial, economic and social crises, the present seems a particularly wrong time. Today, identity questions are pushed aside. The problematisation of the unequal position of women in the public space, of the violence against women and children, of the discrimination against ‘the erased’, of foreign workers, of the discrimination against single people, and especially of the complete legal inequality of gay people and their families have as well as disappeared from the agendas of political parties, parliamentary meetings, and television programs. Unfortunately the same is true for the banners, assemblies, and round tables of the protest movements.

Social and economic justice cannot exist without absolute equality regardless of life circumstances. Just like the freedom without solidarity and safety pushes the majority of people into an existential uncertainty, functioning as a tool for the individualization of guilt for the social and economic hardship, so do safety and solidarity without freedom lock the individuals into a totalitarian cage. Aspirations towards the emancipation of social minorities and towards a greater economic equality are therefore inseparably connected.

Gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals demand an absolute legal equality, which is only the first step on the road to equal participation in the search for solutions to the societal problems; solutions founded on solidarity, care, and economic and social safety for all. We do not want to spend another quarter of a century demanding our basic human rights – the rights which by definition belong to all human beings but are nevertheless denied to us by conservative political and social forces in Slovenia, and inadequately advocated by the declared progressive forces.

We want to participate in the search for the answers to the challenges of our time: they determine our lives much more than the prejudiced and calculating priests and politicians. The concerns of living in a country of unpaid workers, destitute elderly, hungry children, and incompetent political elites as are just as pressing and of same importance to us as the rights of children of homosexuals, or the right to paid sick leave to care for a same-sex life partner. After all, gays and lesbians are also the victims of economic inequalities, just as we are part of a big family, in which freedom and solidarity are an inseparably connected (same-gender) couple.