ZAGREB LGBTIQ PRIDE MARCH 2012

We have Family!

A Millennium of Croatian Dreaming

M A N I F E S T O

We are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer mothers, fathers, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, singles, widows and widowers. Happy and sad, loved and unloved, poor and privileged, we are born, go to school, live and work, pay taxes without exemptions, we vote in elections or detested them; we celebrate and we cry, say goodbye and meet again, we love and don't love, and we have lived and existed for as long as mankind has been on earth.

They call us the same-sex community, same-sex registered life partners, homosexuals, gays and lesbians, dykes and fags, promiscuous freaks, outcasts and scum, or just an invented problem of  society. They marginalize and exclude us.

However, we are a community that does not exclude anyone. We who march in Zagreb Pride are seeking full civil rights for all: lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered and transsexual people, and for our heterosexual, straight friends. We are the ones who, with our lives, our identities, our experience, our need for equality, are not waving a sword of superiority, we don't look down on others from on high, and we do not tell them how to run their lives. For the eleventh time in Zagreb we will occupy the streets of our city to once again confirm our holy mission: we are on the side of justice, and not egotism!

We don't need teachers, university professors, film stars, populist politicians or hypocritical ministers, prime ministers or presidents, priests or shamans, fundamentalists or fanatics, televangelist commentators or popular judgement, psychiatrists or doctors to tell us what 'family' is! Because we know what is family. We are family. We did not appear from nowhere: we ourselves came from families; we were not conceived by the Holy Spirit, nor brought by a stork.

The fortunate among us grew up in families full of love, respect, understanding and support. Others among us, born in a holy family, blessed by a priest and recognised by state and society, were beaten, hated, raped, kicked out of home and discriminated against. Family is not forcing gay children to psychiatrists, psychologists or priest-exorcists. Family is not making trans girls take testosterone. Family is not insisting that lesbians marry men. Family is not denying trans boys the right to decide about their own bodies. Family is not inspired by blind hatred to reject its own children. To be called 'family', it is not enough to simply have two people of the opposite sex and their biological offspring. Family is when the wife is not beaten, the son not abused, the children not humiliated or neglected.

Love is what brings together and creates a family. Family is that which loves, respects and accepts. We are that family. Same-sex, different-sex, homosexual and heterosexual... These are all family groups. We are no different, we who are LGBTIQ parents, nor are our children any different. Children who exist, and who live in Croatia. Some start school in Autumn, others will finish soon, and some have only just been born. Children who have come from our decision, our decision as parents. These are children who are loved, no matter how they came into this world: through planning, the possibilities offered by modern medicine, adoption, or by being born in another, previous family that we tried to build.

We who are part of the greater LGBTIQ family refuse to be invisible. We refuse to be unequal. We refuse to heed the message that our family does not exist.

We will never be satisfied with charity, crumbs, and hypocritical compromises from those who rule, or from bigots. We are not satisfied with the message that they will generously allow us some rights. We desire and seek all rights. We demand equality!

We who walk in the Pride March are now saying "Enough!" Enough vulgar insults such as those we see on television, read in the newspapers and hear on the radio. We say enough sophisticated insults from politicians.

Our vision is acceptance. Our desire is equality. Our need is solidarity. These are the values which all families should be based – partnerships built on love, and not on hate. We will fight for our right to arrange our lives as we wish, as full and equal members of a society in which and individual's personal freedom stops where another's freedom begins.

We will build our families, raise and educate our children, support each other in the name of love and solidarity, and be part of a large, proud and confident LGBTIQ community that is socially responsible and influential.

And so we say to all our dear friends, that in this fight for justice many will be hurt, as many already have been. The blood of dykes and fags, bi and trans people – of all of us who are downtrodden, has been spilt throughout the world. At the same time the spectre of faggotry is circling Croatia: today Zagreb and Split, tomorrow Osijek, Rijeka, Zadar... Nothing will ever be the same. No religious, political, or so-called family traditions can stop the change. Because the world is always moving forward. The only constant in this world is change!

And we will become citizens, and we will be people – with full rights, equal. Because our time has come, and the work ahead of us is great. Our love will overcome all hate!