Friday, January 18, 2013

Mark Splinter for The Lithuania Tribune

Let’s get this straight (pun not intended). The authorities want to move the gay parade to the other side of the river. Their stated reason for this is that they cannot protect the safety of participants if the march takes place in the main street in town. There’s too many sniper positions.

This is nothing less than an open declaration of impotence, or unwillingness to protect a peaceful democratic protest, or both. This is exactly the same as saying “the terrorists have won”. Terrorism is using criminal intimidation for political gain. I have lived in a country where people actually used bombs and machine guns to force the authorities to divert parades, and it wasn’t pretty. I don’t think Lithuania is that bad, and if the police can’t stop a bunch of homophobes from committing violent crimes then I am very surprised.

For some reason, the authorities are making great efforts to prevent a human rights parade, on the day Lithuania gains the Presidency of the Council of the EU. Could there be a more embarrassing time to admit that you can’t or don’t want to protect a few people dancing with rainbow flags in support of the core values you signed up to in 2004? Don’t they want to live in a country where people aren’t attacked for their sexuality or any other moronic reason?

The only conclusion is that the authorities don’t want the parade, and are using the untouchable excuse of “security concerns” for political reasons, because they are scared of the opinion at home, and they don’t give a flying baguette for the opinion of the EU they claim to be loyal members of.

The Lithuanian national sport is not basketball; it’s blaming the victim, or attacking anyone who stands up for the victim. The Lithuanian national sport is loudly telling other people on the internet that they should be quiet. The Lithuanian national sport is to plead “democracy” and “freedom of speech” whenever you want to say something vile and despicable, but to ban anyone who wants to say something about equality that’s already written in the Constitution and the EU Treaties which the overwhelming majority of citizens voted for.

This is the logic which leads many people, including some of my intelligent friends, to a very weird conclusion. They look at a gay parade with people kissing and hugging and dancing and standing up for human rights and the Constitution, and then they imagine the possibility of a bunch of hooligans attacking the parade with baseball bats and Molotov cocktails, and they conclude that the gays are guilty, for provoking the attack.

Is this really any different from blaming a rape victim for the length of her skirt? Or blaming Lithuanians for provoking the Soviets?

If anybody dares to attack a peaceful parade, why not blame the authorities who are paid to prevent the attack? They have notification of the event and they know perfectly well what to do. Perhaps they just can’t be bothered to do their job of defending democracy on the main street running from the Cathedral to the Parliament.

Here’s another of my crazy controversial suggestions – Why not blame the criminals committing the crimes?

“Being angry about someone peacefully exercising their human rights” is not a defence in any court.

Unfortunately, the idea persists in Lithuania that most people are “normal” and other people are “perverts”. The definition of “normal” is white, Catholic, heterosexual and never outspoken. Gayness is at best a “perverse lifestyle choice” similar to hanging around children’s’ playgrounds or masturbating on public transport. At worst, gayness is a mental illness like schizophrenia, or it’s literally an infestation of the Devil. There are members of Parliament who think gayness can be “cured”, and there are members of Parliament who jumped over metal barriers at the last gay parade, and got arrested, and kept their jobs without feeling any need to resign.

With that kind of thinking, you can come up with the idea that gay parades “encourage gayness” and “spread the disease”. You can pretend you support human rights while simultaneously saying that gays shouldn’t be allowed to “express themselves too loudly in public”, because you think they are sick with an infection that is transmitted by sharing glow-sticks. Maybe one of the glow-sticks will fall onto the pavement and accidentally be picked up by a child!

If you are an idiot trying to be nice, you can say things like “they can do whatever they want in the privacy of their own bedroom” – as if you would enjoy being forced to wear a burkha whenever you leave your bedroom, due to threats of violence from men who are opposed to hotpants.

If you are human and you like your rights, how can you oppose a peaceful democratic parade? The answer is simple – by claiming that “the majority” of “normal people” don’t want to “see that” because it is “dangerous”. This sounds kinda democratic and sensible because it has the word “majority” in it. The flaw in the argument is that democracy’s purpose is to give a voice to the minority. And gayness isn’t dangerous.

Despite the hugely obvious and scientifically proven fact that gayness is not evangelistic, not aggressive, not an illness, and is not infectious, some people still insist it’s OK to demand a moratorium on “development” of the gay community by “aggressive propaganda”. They make laws banning schools from mentioning gayness, because they think words can “corrupt” children.

They actually think that a straight person can be turned gay. Maybe they also think that gays are plotting a coup by mass hypnosis, that we are approaching an apocalyptic tipping point where suddenly the whole country will be consumed by buggery and nobody will get any work done.

Of course, none of these concerned commentators think that they themselves could ever be turned gay, oh no. No no no. Never. But – they care about protecting weaker people who might be turned gay if they see too many rainbow flags or men in dresses.

So, the rationale goes – We need to protect weak people, who, unlike us, have no immunity from the infectious gay disease, and therefore they should not be exposed to gayness, because their weak heterosexuality is normal and should be preserved at all costs.
The rationale continues – We think that some people might not like gayness, and they might attack the gay parade. We cannot guarantee the safety of parade participants, due to our incompetence and/or lack of will. We’re not even going to try.

Therefore – we have two reasons to move the gay parade away from the main street: Health and safety.
Genius.

It should be noted that the authorities have provided security for parades on this street before, even after hearing rumours of busloads of Polish neo-Nazi driving to Vilnius for the swastika-waving Hitler-loving propaganda-distributing youth-recruiting Europe-hating nationalist parade down the same street last year.

I hope I have made it clear that opposing a gay parade on the grounds of safety is complete and utter (please pardon my absolutely necessary swearword) bullshit.