Quote Originally Posted by lits View Post
That's truly sad and i hope they succed in having a successful Queer Festival next year. However, i heavily doubt that this has a lot to do with Sarajevo being a muslim city. I reckon about the same would have happened in Zagreb (Croatia, a majorly catholic city), or Belrad (Serbia, orthodox).

Actually, you are totally wrong about Zagreb. Queer Festival in Sarajevo has been done after the manifestation under the same name has been happening with great success and no incidents for the last few years in Zagreb. Its a cultural manifestation of great pride to the city.


Zagreb Gay Pride however enjoys less of a general enthusiasm, but thats for several reasons. One, the thing people of Zagreb hate the most is when their traffic is disturbed (no joke); two, people who participate have no agenda they protest for, other than to dress as shockingly as possible and behave in a very extrovert manner. Most people just pass by, not caring either way...but you always have a couple of grandpas that feel obliged to say something stupid about how unnatural it is and a few drunk idiots looking for a brawl,...thus heavy police presence, which could be an explanation why there were no major incidents and only few minor ones.

I don't know where the impression comes from, but religion was never a point of dispute in Croatia, nationality yes (until about 8 years ago), but religion never....maybe its one good remain of social history, but Catholics, Muslims...are of the "hypocritical", lol, variety. They all proclaim themselves great believers, usually after a few drinks, but nobody really cares. There are no fundamentalists of any religion. (football fantastics excluded, of course) Its normal for couples to live together before wedding, its a great trend to not marry at all, it never occurred to anyone to organize a serious anti-abortion initiative, and when some priests tried to interfere with government modernizing "fertility" laws, normally lazy for such things Croats organized big protests against Church and that was the end of it.

I don't know about Queer Fest in Belgrade, but I do know that when they tried to organize a Gay Pride it turned into a Horror Fest, very violent, very ugly and police didn't do nothing to protect them.