Split Europe: Homonationalism and Homophobia in Croatia

Abstract

In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), tolerance of homosexuality has been portrayed as a value associated with the idea of Europe (or the West, or America) both by local queers aspiring to attaining rights in their own countries and perhaps even more by nationalists who want to exclude homosexuals from the nation by portraying homosexuality as a foreign import. It is part of a tradition I have followed since the early 1990s (Moss 1995). I have found numerous examples of right-wing nationalists in Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia, and Yugoslavia defining national identity as purely heterosexual, while portraying homosexuality as an import from Western Europe. Wiktor Grodecki’s three pseudo-documentaries about Prague rent boys, for example, present the boys as innocent straight Czechs who fall into the clutches of depraved gay clients from Western Europe (Moss 2006). Recently the best analysis of this kind of mapping has come from Agnieszka Graff in Poland (Graff 2006, 2008, 2010). Anxieties about joining the European Union (EU) were expressed in Poland via attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, and for the nationalists “homophobia” became a mark of national difference. The conflict, she writes, “was more about cultural identity and national pride than about sexual orientation or public morality” (Graff 2010: 584). In other words, Poles were homophobes not because they were Catholic or because homosexuality is immoral or unnatural, but because they were Poles, and homophobia is a sign of patriotism. Tolerance of gay people became a litmus test for attitudes toward EU accession.