Rainbow after rain on the parade

This weekend, Vilnius is set for a historic first, hosting the Baltic Pride – a regional pride festival that rotates between the three Baltic countries – on the city’s main avenue Gedimino Prospektas. Needless to say, after the weekend’s horrific homophobic murder spree in Orlando, the importance of normalising and mainstreaming LGBTI acceptance couldn’t be more obvious. If Vilnius, and Lithuania, can take pride in being forward-looking and tolerant in some respects, this has so far not been the case for LGBTI rights. The country has an infamous anti-gay law that restricts the dissemination of information that is ‘harmful to minors’ in that it contemplates forms of family arrangements other than heterosexual marriage. There is perhaps not the thuggish persecution of the Queer community like in other former Soviet countries. And the general response among locals is that it is fine for people to love whoever they want, as long as it’s not with regards to their own sons and daughters. Yet the country has a long way to go to embrace the plurality of the human capacity for love and tolerance, and having a Pride festival – on the main downtown drag (pun intended), as opposed to the outskirts of town as in previous attempts – is a huge win. And the concerts by Dana International and this year’s Lithuanian Eurovision contribution, Donny Montell, will surely go a long way to bridge Lithuania’s incongruous difficulty, on one hand, in embracing LGBTI rights, whilst at the same time going completely nuts for the Eurovision festival. So let’s hope for some sunshine, and a great party, on Saturday.