People in Quotation Marks

In the apartment to the left of the elevator on the ground floor of the tower block in Ljubljana’s Vodmat where I grew up lived a short gentleman who got very angry with us children when we played soccer in front of his balcony. If, despite his stamping and arm-waving, he didn’t exactly strike fear into us, it was different with the burly man in the green uniform of the Ljubljana city transport company who came to visit late in the evening and knocked very quietly on the door to the left of the elevator. We were afraid of him because he was big—I remember he had boots like tank treads—scowling, and always glancing around furtively. If he had nothing to hide, he wouldn’t be hiding from people like a thief, we thought. Whenever conversation among the neighbors turned to the unusual couple on the ground floor, there was always someone who lowered their voice, drew quotation marks in the air with their fingers and said, “You know, the two of them are …”

One evening, as I was waiting alone for the elevator, I suddenly found myself face to face with the mysterious visitor. I think the encounter frightened him even more than it did me. His friend’s door stayed shut, the elevator just wouldn’t come, so for the first time I really looked at him up close. And I realized that the expression on his face, which we had always taken for scowling and anger, was in fact sadness and fear.

People also had plenty to say about a neighbor on our floor who worked at the same place as my father. We weren’t afraid of him; he was polite and friendly. He often came over for coffee, and sometimes for lunch. Until one day he was found in his apartment. They say he had taken his own life. My grandmother Anuncijata, who lived in the center of town, had an acquaintance called Lorelei. He was a florist and often gave my grandmother beautiful bouquets. Simply because she always greeted him kindly and always found time to chat with him. Because she accepted him as a human being. Without belittling, without mockery, without contempt. Without quotation marks.

Homosexuality was indeed decriminalized in Slovenia by the criminal code that came into force in 1977, but that did not do away overnight with deeply rooted prejudices. Society at the time did not accept homosexuals and did not want to have them before its eyes. I think we can hardly imagine the distress and pain in which thousands of people lived and eked out an existence, pushed to the margins by social intolerance. Many into depression, some into alcohol, some, like our neighbor, into death.

I remembered these experiences with homosexuals from my youth a few days ago when I came across a news item in the French media about the wedding of two 72-year-old women in a retirement home in the town of Valenciennes near the Belgian border. Andrée and Liliane met at a children’s shelter when they were eleven. Both without family, they have been inseparable ever since. First friends, then a couple from the age of 25, for almost half a century now. In silence, because they were always afraid of how those around them would accept their love. They have now been in the retirement home for a decade, in the same room. Only their guardian and one of the nurses knew about their relationship, and both respected their wish for privacy, even though, as it turned out, it was born of fear. When the residents of the home went on an outing to a nearby beach this summer, the conversation over lunch turned to marriage for all, as same-sex couples’ right to marry is called in France. Andrée and Liliane could not believe their ears. Until that moment they had been convinced that same-sex partners could only marry in films and TV series. When they were finally persuaded that this was not so, Andrée proposed to Liliane on the spot. Preparations for the wedding began as soon as they returned to the home. The wedding dresses were ordered online, and since Amazon doesn’t offer many models for brides of such mature years, a nurse at the home altered them on her sewing machine. When the big day came, almost all the residents of the home set off for the town hall, with transport provided by a team from the municipal administration. The ceremony was conducted by the mayor with his sash across his chest and with all the republican pomp that only the French can manage. In the photos published by the media, the faces of Liliane and Andrée are glowing with happiness. And pride. Because after 47 years they no longer have to hide their love from others. Because they can love each other in full view of everyone.

I am not telling the story of Andrée and Liliane out of a guest worker’s enthusiasm for everything abroad being better and more progressive than at home. For France, at least, that is far from true. Although the law that recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry has been in force for almost a decade and none of the parliamentary parties opposes it today, its adoption was preceded by stormy and massive protests, at which a good part of the center-right also chased political points, not to mention the far right. And as the Slovenian experience with the decriminalization of homosexuality has shown, not even the law changes deeply rooted prejudices overnight. A year ago I wrote about fourteen-year-old Dinah from the Alsatian town of Kingersheim near the Swiss border, whose mother found her hanged in her bedroom. According to her mother, Dinah saw no other way out because of the constant harassment, mockery and abuse from her peers, both at school and on social media. Dinah was a popular and sociable high school student, a good pupil and athlete, always surrounded by friends. She wanted to become President of the Republic, her mother said. At thirteen she decided to confide her sexual orientation to her peers, and her life turned into hell.

I write about my childhood neighbors, about Lorelei, Andrée and Liliane, and about Dinah to remind us that we are talking about people. Because we evidently like to forget that. We are talking about people who are still often discriminated against, exposed to prejudice, pushed to the margins of society, stigmatized as perverts, pedophiles, a danger to children and society, exploited to stoke intolerance, abused to promote populist and authoritarian political ideas. Simply because they are different.

We usually associate the persecution of certain social groups with authoritarian and backward regimes. In Putin’s Russia, homophobia is a political instrument for holding on to power. In the name of fighting LGBT+ ideology, which supposedly threatens the spiritual purity of the Russian nation from the decadent West, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church blesses and supports the aggression against Ukraine. Unfortunately, we can see again and again that homophobia exists and flourishes in democracies too. Here as well. It is not only about extremists who collect political points with prejudice and hatred. Let us remember the shameful calculation and cowardice of the then governing “liberal” party, which seven years ago did not want to engage seriously in the referendum on the Family Code, saying it was a sensitive matter and the people should decide. Let us remember the claims of one of the candidates in the last presidential election that he had nothing against same-sex unions but was against “LGBT+ ideology.” As if stigmatizing certain social groups becomes legitimate and acceptable if you wrap it in a fraudulent package that presents a personal circumstance as a deliberate (and perverse) ideological choice. Homosexuality and transgender identity are not ideologies, unlike intolerance and hatred toward same-sex unions and transgender people.

A few days ago, the American and global public were shocked by footage of the father of the shooter at a gay club in Colorado Springs, who, drunk with hatred toward same-sex partners, said how relieved he was to learn that his son was not gay but merely a mass murderer. Whatever we think of this guy (and the worst, in my opinion, is not bad enough), at least we cannot accuse him of hypocrisy. Which cannot be said of people who package their prejudices in cultural, religious and other excuses. Who grant certain social groups only half their rights and only half their human dignity, because they regard them as only half human. It doesn’t work. You can’t be just a little homophobic, just as you can’t be just a teeny bit racist or just a little antisemitic. In the days before the referendum on the Family Code seven years ago, I wrote that claiming same-sex couples have no right to marry because they can register their partnership is like telling Rosa Parks to stop making a fuss, since she can sit at the back of the bus. Everyone has the right to their religious and political beliefs, but that gives no one the right, in the name of their beliefs, to commit violence against their fellow human beings and push them into a subordinate social position. Attitudes toward homosexuality and transgender people are one of the important indicators of how civilized and open a society is.

In recent days, an avalanche of attacks and the crudest insults has been unleashed on a transgender person who, with great courage and dignity, spoke publicly about her life. The trigger was an invitation to talk about transgender identity to high school students in Postojna. The well-known political hucksters of prejudice and intolerance spoke up, then the youth choir of a political party that sees itself as center-right, and after them the internet infantry, which translates sotto voce stigmatization into the crudest forms of verbal violence and hatred. It’s about the children, you say? I partly agree with you. It is also about children. I have four myself, and what worries me most is that they might grow up and live in a society subjected to the violence of your prejudices, frustrations and delusions. It is not the people to whom you deny equality and human dignity who belong in quotation marks, but your morality and humanity. Take a look in the mirror. If you can’t do it for the sake of the people you cause distress and injustice to, then at least do it for the children.