The first unwritten rule we learn in kindergartens is that playing with dolls is for girls, while cars are for boys. Pink is exclusively for skirts, and blue is the colour of shirts. In elementary school, teachers pair up a boy and a girl at the desks and carefully observe the development of their relationship, lest they accidentally dream up a married couple from the seven-year-olds whose cupids they were. In high school, Romeo and Juliet, two children in a tragic romance, celebrated by teachers as a standard, the sincerest love drama, teaching you what true, untainted love looks like. The principle is the same for everyone.
The rainbow agenda is everywhere.
It hides in advertisements for home loans, where a father and mother, with a son and daughter, negotiate the benefits of low-interest repayment. It is so noticeable that it burns your eyes. It can even be found in nature and society books for the third grade of elementary school, where the picture of a family consists of the same members as in the advertisement for a home loan, possibly with the addition of a grandma and grandpa.
Or, a closer example of the colourful agenda is when your environment teaches you that there is only one conventional type of romantic love and that any other kind is wrong and against religious principles. And that religion, somewhat contradictorily, advocates for love and equality, or at least that is what it says in some of their scriptures, correct me if I am wrong.
Although, I believe you can also find it in the treatment of human rights when the rainbow agenda fights against the rights of a different, smaller community that only wants to love and be accepted while supporting people who have no connection with that community but feel entitled to debate their rights.
I will also mention examples where this agenda calls people to protest with fascist banners like “Knife, wire, Srebrenica” or chauvinistic slogans like “Montenegro, Serbian Sparta,” which have recently become popular.
And so on endlessly.
«The gay agenda» is a myth invented by xenophobic and ignorant people. It only exists within the conservative agenda, which serves to spread hatred and narrow-mindedness. If the «gay agenda» was a real thing, it would focus on the same issues that the LGBTQ+ community and activists already address – promoting love for all people equally, equal rights for everyone regardless of gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, religious beliefs, ethnicity, or nationality.
Representation is not the same as a political agenda. Why is it different to see two men kissing on the big screen compared to the same act between two people of the opposite sex? How does it harm girls to read literature featuring strong lesbian characters who present relationships as an extension of themselves rather than a symbiotic dependence, while it doesn’t harm them to have only female characters to look up to in their development who cannot fulfil their full potential without a male character? How does the constant imposition of the idea that asexual adults must be sick without sexual desires and activities affect them? What happens when we remain silent about transgender people and rarely see or hear about their issues on national channels and frequencies, while simultaneously labeling them as nature’s mistakes?
The rainbow may not have always been a symbol of resistance, struggle, love, and perseverance for LGBTQ+ individuals, but LGBTQ+ people have always coloured it with creativity, persistence, unity, uniqueness, joy, art, and indescribable beauty. And I thank them for such an agenda.
Milica Pavlović, a student at the Faculty of Design and Multimedia, University of Donja Gorica.
This column is part of the project ‘’Together Against Prejudice!’’ conducted by the Centre for Civic Education (CCE) with financial support from the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights. The views expressed in this column are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Ministry of Human and Minority Rights or the CCE.