Organizers of this year’s Montenegrin Pride, scheduled for Saturday, called on the government to promote Montenegro as a secular society and improve the rights of the LGBT community generally.

The tenth Montenegrin Pride will take place under the slogan, “No more but” [“Nema više ali”], while the main event will be a walk in the capital, Podgorica, passing parliament, the government building and the city assembly.

The organizers, the NGO Queer Montenegro, called on fellow citizens to show that Montenegro is secular, civic state that respects human rights.

“We will express our dissatisfaction with a system where human rights are generally not respected …This is the most important Montenegrin Pride for all of us who want Montenegrin society to be inclusive for everyone,” the head of Queer Montenegro, Milos Knezevic, told BIRN.

At the first Montenegro Pride march in 2014, more than 500 protesters, mostly football hooligans, hurled rocks and bottles at the small march staged by only a few dozen gay activists. Twenty police were injured and 60 people detained in the mayhem.

While the government is fully behind the march now, in past years intolerance towards the gay community was widespread on social networks.

Earlier surveys have suggested that as many as 71 per cent of citizens in Montenegro still view homosexuality as an illness and that every second citizen sees it as a danger to society and would wish the state to suppress it.

Church plans counter-rally ‘against debauchery’

For the first time since Pride marches were organized in Montenegro, the Serbian Orthodox Church, the largest faith group in the country, has called for a mass religious counter-rally, for the “preservation of the family”.

On September 5, the top bishop in the country, Metropolitan Joankije, urged believers to gather and pray to uphold the sanctity of marriage and ensure the preservation of the family.

“Certain power structures from the world are preaching and promoting immorality and debauchery in Montenegro. We must gather and condemn that public preaching of immorality and protect the family and children,” Metropolitan Joanikije said.

The Church’s call followed tensions over the controversial EuroPride 2022 event in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, which authorities attempted to ban.

In advance of the EuroPride event, thousands of people gathered in Belgrade on August 15 to demonstrate against it, also claiming they wanted to “protect the family”.

Knezevic said the Church should refrain from trying to degrade the civil and democratic concept of Montenegrin society.

“What worries us a lot is the fact that the state institutions have been tacitly approving the more than evident polarization and clericalization of society, which is being emphasized by the Church. Our community and Pride march does not endanger the so-called traditional values ​​and traditional family,” Knezevic said.

Growing numbers of same-Sex partnerships

According to NGO Civic Education Centre, a survey from June 28 showed around 55 per cent of citizens supported Pride marches, while 35 per cent were opposed.

The survey also showed that 47 per cent of citizens think that LGBT rights are not respected, while 42 per cent said they are respected.

Meanwhile, authorities said that 22 same-sex marriages were registered in Montenegro since the first same-sex partnership was registered in the coastal resort of Budva last July.

These pioneering same-sex unions came a year after Montenegro became the first non-EU Balkan state to legalize same-sex partnerships.

In July 2020, parliament voted to recognize same-sex civil partnerships with the support of a narrow majority of MPs from the then ruling Democratic Party of Socialists, DPS, the Social Democrats, the Liberal Party and the opposition Social Democratic Party.

Montenegro failed twice before to adopt laws on same-sex unions – in 2014 and 2019. It succeeded in July 2020, the only non-EU ex-Yugoslav republic to do so, although Serbia has similar legislation in the pipeline. Of the other former Yugoslav republics, EU members Croatia and Slovenia have legalized same-sex unions.

Under the law, same-sex couples can enter into a legal union at their local registry office. The law also allows for the regulation of mutual financial support and division of joint property in event of divorce. It does not allow same-sex couples to adopt or foster children.

But Queer Montenegro’s Knezevic warned that the law was still not harmonized with wider legislation, accusing the government of breaching a July deadline to do so.

“Two years since the law was adopted, its harmonization with wider legislation has not been completed. We’ve proposed specific amendments to the legislative framework that need to be harmonized with this law, but so far there has been no response from the government,” Knezevic said.

Samir Kajosevic

Click here to subscribe to ESSF newsletters in English and/or French.