Comments on: Another Week, Another Pride

By: amber

amber — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:10:34 +0000

It’s just fear and hatred of the other, the strange unknown, the traditionally vilified. But there’s no effort to educate in order to dispel the ignorance and fear. It’s easy to target and scapegoat homosexuals since the government does not set a strong and clear anti-discrimination policy and the church leadership openly advocates discrimination. There’s so little “consciousness raising” in relation to so many issues in Latvia, instead a frightening decent into some backward darkness. It takes brave people to speak up against any discrimination but it appears that homosexuals in Latvia have few unequivocal allies. Latvians have been betrayed by incompetent, inadequate leadership, inspired by neither heaven nor earth. Good luck, Aleks, with your life in Latvia. I’ll be joining you soon but it will be hard to stay for long.

By: Aleks

Aleks — Sun, 27 May 2007 03:43:49 +0000

I wouldn’t call any clear political force a “conservative.” My wording referred to the country in general, compared to the liberal West, when it comes to solving social problems.

I don’t see Latvians in general supporting for example legalization of euthanasia, as it’s done in Holland.

Words often get blurred meaning especially such words as “liberal” and “conservative.”

I think our politicians are not hateful themselves, they’ve become skilled at using that hatred to their advantage.

We’re also confused about democracy as a whole; we think democracy means the rule of the majority, whereas in a democracy, minority is more important than majority and all points of view deserve to be heard.

One thing for sure, we’ve got a long way to go in regards to homosexuality and democratic principles.

By: plant_le

plant_le — Sun, 27 May 2007 03:06:38 +0000

I believe Latvia has nothing to do with conservativeness, I actually believe there’s no extremism involved for that matter (I mean among politicians). Just sporadic, omnipresent or the complete opposite: completely absent actions or lack of action of foul language? Yea I just termed explicit hate crimes foul language, I mean Kalv?tis was completely supportive of freedom of speech just before (I’m not sure about the timeline) he decided that the gay pride march is something completely unacceptable. Just like that.
I mean conservative people just as extremists have a stance. Although Šmits actually has a stance (he has alleged toward killing gays, for instance), so I assume, say, it’s 50% plain retardedness and 50% hate crimes, I believe it has nothing to do with politicians being conservative, gay marriage has been on their agenda for some 01 days until they ruled, at their sole discretion, marriage be an economic union solely for reproductive purposes. Latvia still has to uphold [catholic/lutheran/communist/nazi] morals being the last country in the entire galaxy to decriminalize cannabis.. I believe when these issues would actually be on agenda (some 22nd century) then it could be considered a conservative state. Now the best you can hope for is hatred (but it’s still better than randomized speeches).

By: Aleks

Aleks — Sat, 26 May 2007 09:42:15 +0000

Believe it or not, but I was going to link to your article, Peteris.

“Conservative” is certainly a relative term. By comparison with other European countries in Scandinavia, or in former Western Europe, Holland in particular, we’re very conservative here. When comparing us to folks in Wichita, Kansas, we’d be liberals. I wrote about our family values back in 2005 and I guess I’ll have to write about it again.