and queer belonging in

Hadley Z. Renkin

Abstract: Violent attacks on gay and activities in the public sphere, coupled with verbal aggression against sexual minorities by right-wing politicians in Hungary and other postsocialist countries, illustrate the centrality of sexuality in questions of postsocialist transition. This article discusses the limits of current scholarly interpretations of homophobia in postsocialist countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on LGBT activism in Hungary, it argues that by undertak- ing public projects that assert multiple forms of identity and community, LGBT people, although often portrayed as passive objects of the changing configurations of power of Hungary’s transition, have raised a radical challenge to traditional imaginings of the boundaries between national and transnational meanings. It is this challenge—the proposal of a “queering” of belonging—to which right-wing, nationalist actors have responded with public violence. Keywords: homophobia, Hungary, LGBT activism, national belonging, postsocialism

On 7 July 2007 the March in Buda - assaulted as they returned home following the pest, Hungary was violently attacked by skinhead, after-March celebrations. Eleven participants neo-Nazi, and nationalist “counterdemonstra- were beaten, at least two so badly that they were tors.” From the intersection of Dohány street on hospitalized. These attacks were repeated at the the city’s Main Ring Road to the March’s end on July 2008 March. This time, anti-gay forces were the bank of the Danube, the approximately 2,000 more numerous and organized. Thanks to the marchers were ceaselessly pelted with eggs, bot- presence of thousands of from all over tles, bags of sand, and at least two incendiary Hungary, none of the participants was seriously flares. Besides missiles, right-wing attackers, injured. Nonetheless, the March suffered a con- from youths to elderly women, hurled epithets stant rain of rocks, bottles, eggs (some filled such as “Filthy queers!” and “[Throw the] fag- with dye or caustic substances), fireworks, and gots into the Danube!” Some waved nationalist flares; many participants likened the experience flags. Others, dressed in black uniforms, gave to being in a war. Nazi salutes. The violence did not end with the With these attacks, sexuality has clearly March; later that night gays and were emerged as one of the most salient forms of cul-

Focaal—European Journal of Anthropology 53 (2009): 20–37 doi:10.3167/fcl.2009.530102 Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 21 tural-political difference in postsocialist Hun- Island), because they constituted “an unambigu- gary. Although previous Pride Marches in Bu- ous hazard” to the nation’s youth.3 Such remarks dapest had seen isolated, peaceful protests, the have been reinforced by recent statements by attacks of the last two summers have brought nationally known figures on the right, including Hungary into conformity with a much-noted László Surján, vice-president of the Christian trend of violent, public homophobia that has re- Democratic Party (KNDP) and representative cently appeared in almost all the countries of to the European Parliament, that Pride Marches Eastern Europe. Over the last several years, are “provocative” actions (Népszabadság Online, Pride Marches in Poland, Serbia, Croatia, Ro- 9 July 2007). Other right-wing politicians have mania, Latvia, and Russia have faced violent labeled LGBT people “deviants” who “spread right-wing assaults.1 sickness throughout the Hungarian Nation,”4 Such attacks have been accompanied by a arguing that public Pride Marches require equally noticeable escalation of openly homophobic public counterdemonstration, “in order to pro- rhetoric by major public figures. In Poland, for tect our children, and in the interest of assuring example, the country whose homophobia has the healthy development of our community.”5 attracted the most international notice, the then The significance of public homophobia has prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz openly also been widely noted outside the right. The asserted in 2005 that “homosexuality is contrary proliferation of stories about the attacks in the to nature” (cited in Graff 2006). Other Polish Hungarian press in the weeks following the politicians have gone further, such as an MP for 2007 and 2008 Pride Marches revealed that ho- the right-wing League of Polish Families, who mophobia has come to be seen as a figure for recommended “police batons” as the proper way more general cultural and political struggles. to handle gay rights marchers (Amnesty Inter- The political left has echoed this view, insisting national Report 2006, cited in O’Dwyer and that the attacks on the March threatened more Schwartz 2007) and current President Lech than just gay people. ’s Head Mayor, Kaczynski, who banned gay rights marches in Gábor Demszky of the liberal SzDSz (Associa- Warsaw in both 2004 and 2005. In Latvia, too, tion of Free Democrats), for example, saw them powerful public and political figures have be- as reflective of Hungary itself, as broadly intol- come increasingly open in expressing homo- erant actions “in opposition to everything phobic positions. In 2002 both Lutheran and which the democratic countries of the world Catholic archbishops contributed chapters to a hold as normal.”6 Likewise, MSzP (Hungarian book published by nationalist Aivars Garda, Socialist Party) representative Tímea Szabóné called “Homosexuality: Humanity’s shame and Müller warned such actions were “reminiscent ruin” (Schwartz 2005, Waitt 2005), while in 2005 of the darkest periods of human history.”7 the then prime minister, Aigars Kalvitis of the The pervasive nature of such attacks has also center-right People’s Party, denounced Latvia’s resulted in a small but rapidly growing body of first Pride March as “unacceptable [in] a state scholarly analysis that has attempted to investi- based on Christian values” (cited in O’Dwyer gate why, and from what roots, such an appar- and Schwartz 2007). ently new and widespread phenomenon has Hungarian politicians on the right, too, have arisen. In this article, I critically examine these become increasingly vociferous in attacks on les- discourses on postsocialist homophobia, and bians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender (LGBT) consider them in light of two of the most cen- people in the last several years.2 One example tral Hungarian LGBT activist projects. My goal that drew considerable public notice was the ef- is to enrich prevailing explanations of the cur- fort in 2001 by István Tárlos, mayor of Buda- rent trend of homophobia in postsocialist coun- pest’s Third District, to ban LGBT people from tries, and to increase our understandings of its the international music festival PepsiSziget (Pepsi complexities. 22 | Hadley Z. Renkin

I argue that rather than being merely objects Dominant views of homophobia in of innate hatreds, or primarily symbols of other postsocialist discourse tensions, as they are often seen to be in domi- nant accounts, it is also the concrete activist Theories of homophobia within fields such as practices of LGBT people that have placed them anthropology, lesbian and gay studies, and queer at the center of postsocialist struggles over be- studies are myriad, and cover a wide range of ap- longing and right-wing anger. Through the proaches from psychological, to social-structural, public projects they have undertaken over the to discursive and ethnographic analysis (Adam last decade, LGBT people have contributed sig- 1998; Boellstorff 2007; Wickberg 2000). Despite nificantly to the broader cultural contests over this rich theoretical background, however, ana- identity and community which have strongly lysts of the current wave of postsocialist homo- shaped Hungary’s ongoing transformations. By phobia in Eastern Europe have largely focused using such projects to assert complex forms of on interpretations that understand homophobia selfhood and connection, Hungarian sexual mi- and its use by right-wing movements in three norities, although often portrayed as passive ways that, though illuminating in certain re- objects of the changing configurations of post- spects, nonetheless have crucial limitations. socialism, have radically challenged traditional imaginings of cultural belonging. In what I refer Psychological Homophobia to as a “queering” of belonging, LGBT people have produced new, critical perspectives on the The first of these approaches sees homophobia emerging structures of postsocialism, and pow- as essentially psychological in character, a deeply erful alternatives to their framing of the bound- individual reaction grounded in personal fear aries between national and transnational of sexual “Others.” In this view, expressions of meanings. It is the far-reaching cultural impli- homophobia result inevitably from the internal cations of these practices, I contend, in addition feelings of hatred and fear with which non-het- to the symbolic meanings of LGBT people, to eronormative sexualities are regarded by certain which right-wing nationalists have responded people. Homophobic reactions are unconscious with such public hatred. and individual; their existence on the level of This article is based on ethnographic field- collective public action stems from the aggrega- work with Hungary’s LGBT community. I con- tion of individual attitudes. ducted research over a period of approximately This perspective was often expressed to me twenty-seven months between 1999 and 2008. in remarks by LGBT Hungarians about both During this time, I took part in a wide range of everyday forms of homophobia and attacks on community activities, including planning meet- Pride Marches, that, for example, “some people ings of activist organizations, protests and pub- just hate us,” or sarcastic claims that extreme ex- lic events, and informal gatherings. I conducted pressions of homophobia reveal people’s fears of interviews with members of Budapest’s main their latent homosexual desires. Likewise, pop- LGBT organizations, groups from smaller cities, ular media reports often treat homophobia as a and non-activists. I collected documents about psychological reflex of certain people and social the Hungarian LGBT movement and its history, groups, typically uneducated workers and the including media materials, European and Amer- unemployed, in response to the psychic pres- ican scholarly research, and the publications sures of socio-economic disaffection. More aca- and archival materials of LGBT activists. From demic contributors to these discourses, which 1999 until 2003, I participated in the Budapest view homophobia in Eastern Europe primarily Pride March every summer. I also took part in the as the result of opportunistic politicians invok- 2007 and 2008 Marches, and in the days that fol- ing “easily available targets” such as LGBT peo- lowed attended discussions among LGBT people ple to manipulate popular sentiment in order to and others about the attacks and their meanings. gain the votes of such groups, depend on simi- Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 23 lar assumptions of an inevitably homophobic the Nation and its needs, and so to align oneself cultural background (e.g., Schwartz 2005).8 with its transnational enemies. Waitt (2005) thus Such interpretations fail to address the un- finds Latvia’s recent rise in homophobia to result derlying question of why homophobia serves as from the post-Soviet resurgence of nationalism, such an effective political tool, and why it is em- and the consequent hegemony of heteronorma- ployed at certain moments and not others. In- tive privilege. Similarly, Riszovannij (2001) iden- stead, these explanations of homophobia simply tifies homophobia in Hungary during the 1990s replicate long-standing condemnatory dis- as an effect of nationalism’s cultural dominance. courses that individualize and decontextualize These perspectives add greatly to our under- social relations, such as those that figured the standing of homophobia. They reveal that sexu- “authoritarian personality” as the key problem ality has long been integral to relations of power of the post–World War II political environment. and politics in Eastern Europe (as elsewhere). They (re)instantiate the homophobe as an object They argue that central formations of postsocial- of strictly psychological origin. Though they ist society are predicated on the position of LGBT may account for one important aspect of homo- people as Others within a historically rooted phobia—the powerful emotions that sustain it cultural politics. In so doing, they refute claims and its violent expressions—the understanding of homophobia’s novelty. At the same time, how- of homophobia as personal and psychological ever, interpretations of this kind obscure key mystifies both its causes and consequences, re- aspects of homophobia in Eastern Europe. This moving it from the realm of the conscious and is because the assumption that historical con- social, and preventing its analysis as a politically nections between national and sexual meanings and culturally consequential phenomenon directly structure their current relationships (Adam 1998; Wickberg 2000). threatens to reify homophobia as a timeless and unchanging part of an equally timeless and un- Heteronormative nationalism changing nationalism. Homophobia thus ulti- mately requires no explanation: it is a static ele- In contrast, other interpretations of homopho- ment inherent to any nationalism, which merely bia strive to see it as both the product of social finds expression in particular practices, while and political relations, and consequential for remaining unaltered by changing contexts. them. Two of the most influential of these have Moreover, this interpretation of the relationship centered on the internal cultural dynamics of between nationalism and sexuality results in a nationalism and its constitution of community, simple binary opposition between nationalism and the tensions between national and transna- and gayness, with vital consequences for under- tional politics and communities. standing both sexual identity and politics: if you Many analyses of postsocialist sexuality, for are a nationalist, you are homophobic; if you are example, take homophobia to be a consequence a homosexual, you are anti-national. As this ar- of the hegemonic nationalist ideologies of post- ticle shows, such constructions ignore the com- socialist Eastern Europe. These approaches plex realities of postsocialist sexual politics. ground themselves in research into the histori- cal connections between nationalism and sexu- Homophobia as anti-“Europe” ality, which argues that modern European proj- ects of nation-building locate the homosexual As do views which trace homophobia to the his- as the constitutive internal Other of the hetero- torical connections between nationalism and sex- normative national subject (Mosse 1985). For uality, the currently most influential inter pre ta - nationalism, the proper member of the Nation tion of postsocialist homophobia emphasizes its is both heterosexual and reproductive. Seen as public and political meanings, and is grounded neither, LGBT people come to represent the Na- in appreciation of nationalism’s power in post- tion’s Other. In this analysis, to be gay is to deny socialist contexts. Proponents of this view, how- 24 | Hadley Z. Renkin ever, argue that sexual minority identities and phobia. Rather than assuming it to be irreducibly politics have become culturally and politically personal, or the past’s ineluctable legacy, they tie consequential in Eastern Europe because of their it to postsocialism’s transnational tensions, no- location within recent patterns of national- tably those between “Europe” and “the Nation” transnational tension. Specifically, LGBT peo- (Eglitis 2002; Verdery 1996). Viewing right-wing ple and politics are associated with the nation’s homophobia as a rejection of a perceived “moral transnational “Others”—primarily “Europe” colonialism” by Western Europe, they locate it and “the West.” For Eric Fassin (2007), percep- within the larger frameworks of dominance and tions of LGBT people and their rights as the key subordination currently shaping East European foci of European Union efforts to promulgate cultural politics. They thus allow us to see more Western European visions of “sexual democ- clearly how homophobic attitudes and actions racy” are what stimulate defensive nationalist re- are embedded in specific social, economic, and actions against them. Likewise, Agnieszka Graff political contexts. has argued that homophobic discourses and ac- The cultural-political meanings of LGBT tions in Poland “can only be understood in their people in Hungary are undeniably shaped in historical and political context—at the intersec- significant ways by these kinds of economic and tion of hopes and anxieties concerning Poland’s political tensions. Openly homophobic state- place in the European Union” (2006: 435). These ments and actions form part of a more general readings of homophobia see LGBT people pattern of increasing right-wing activity in through their symbolic meanings as “symptoms Hungarian politics, emerging from an increas- of modernity”—a modernity taken to be antag- ingly venomous divide between the political onistic to the Nation, properly located elsewhere right and left—a divide reflective of divergent (Bunzl 2004). This symbolic status renders them views of Hungary’s proper relationship to the EU. powerful sites of nationalist hatred. These tensions have been greatly exacerbated by This perspective resonates strongly with views the country’s economic situation: until recently expressed by Hungarian LGBT people. Follow- Hungary was experiencing strong economic ing the 2007 and 2008 attacks, many asserted growth, and considered an exemplar of postso- that neither the counterdemonstrations at the cialist success. In the last several years, however, March, nor the violent attacks on LGBT people its economic condition has declined, and the afterward, were really about “us” (i.e., sexual country is now seen by many as worse off than minorities), rather they were about “politics” in other countries in the region. Many associate general. LGBT people and the Pride March, they the change with Hungary’s 2004 entry into the argued, were merely pretexts for other political EU. The right’s response to the situation has meanings. Like others, one lesbian activist been publicly evident since October 2006 when, pointed to the widening gap between rich and in response to leaked comments about the econ- poor since Hungary’s 2004 EU entry. She spoke omy by Socialist Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurc - of growing popular disillusionment with Hun- sány, right-wing activists occupied the area gary’s government (a coalition of the Socialists around parliament, conducting violent demon- and Free Democrats), as well as with both post- strations and assaulting the state-run television socialist politics and EU–Hungary relations. station. Thus, there has been a great deal of gen- Others saw LGBT people as scapegoats for some eral public protest by the Hungarian right, rooted people’s anger at the EU’s imposition of uniform in the perception that neither the governing co - social rules, including those mandating toler- alition nor the EU have lived up to their (some- ance for sexual minorities, without providing times imagined) promises. uniform social and economic benefits. Yet to take these conditions, and reactions to These transnationalist interpretations pro- them, as the primary explanation for homopho- vide crucial elements to our understanding of bia is to beg the question of why LGBT people the complex meanings of postsocialist homo- in particular have become the current scapegoats Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 25 for economic and political alienation. In order subject—again reinforcing the binary between to account for the place of LGBT people at this the two (Adam 1998; Kitzinger 1987). Critically, crucial symbolic juncture, proponents of trans - this kind of Othering also functions to obscure national explanations ultimately rely on the same the “West’s” homophobia, directing attention assumption they attribute to the right-wing: that from hegemonic intolerance there. LGBT people are essentially transnational, more More importantly, however, by denying the closely linked to “Europe” and “the West” than significance of their actual presence at the cen- the Nation. As Graff has said of Poland, “partic- ter of homophobic violence, such explanations ipants use LGBT events to express their desire ultimately erase LGBT people per se from the to fully participate in the new Europe, with its issue entirely. In these interpretations homo- culture of tolerance and pluralism” (2006: 437). phobic attitudes and actions constitute a kind of Thus, although they expand our sense of the metaphorical reaction, based on the belief that larger relationships and complex dynamics sur- in Eastern Europe LGBT people are seen by rounding homophobia, these interpretations of their opponents primarily as key symbols for homophobia as primarily the expression of na- something else: the dominant transnational tional reaction against a transnational “Europe” Other of EU or “West.” It is thus not actually or “West” retain important flaws; they too de- LGBT people themselves who are the objects of pend on assumptions of a fundamental opposi- homophobia—who matter—but merely that tion between national and transnational, with which they represent. LGBT people positioned on one side of the di- vide, and their opponents on the other. Gays as the new Jews Consequently, and ironically, in figuring ho- mophobia as an “anti-European” reaction, these In a common reading of homophobia that blends views may reproduce orientalist perspectives of elements of the two previous interpretations, very long standing, reinscribing images of East- the notion that LGBT people are understood in ern Europe as Western Europe’s intolerant Other, postsocialist contexts primarily as symbolic rep- and a space of resistance to “civilized” values resentatives of other cultural tensions has led to (Wolff 1994). LGBT people appear here as a kind the conclusion that LGBT people are merely the of “indicator species” for the postsocialist cre- present moment’s scapegoat of convenience.9 ation of inclusive society—for “normal” social Proponents of this view cite rhetorical similari- progress. In one example, the emergence of or- ties between older traditions of anti-Semitism ganized sexual politics in Hungary and the sta- and recent homophobic pronouncements, such tus of LGBT rights “in the context of catching up as remarks by Polish Bishop Stanisław Stefanek with Europe, and joining the European Union, about the 2004 Warsaw “,” in [become] a test for Hungarian democracy” (Ris - which he warned of “a small number of special- zovannij 2001: 159; see also Long 1999, Wallace- ized geniuses” who wish “to conquer the globe,” Lorencová 2003). Similarly, Graff (2006: 448) and to create “moral ruin and the complete de- describes attitudes toward lesbians and gays as struction of the family.”10 Such images of “the litmus test for Polish democracy.” Such dis- morally threatening conspiracy hark back to courses cast the new, Eastern European EU long-standing tropes of Jews as members of a member-states as politically and culturally global Cabal bent on undermining national sur- “backward,” insufficiently tolerant threats to the vival. Similarly, at Budapest’s 2007 Pride March moral integrity of a more advanced, democratic many of the protestors’ slogans mingled Jews “Europe.” Like the psychologizing discourses and LGBT people in the same condemnatory discussed earlier, they imagine the (Eastern Eu- breath. Skinheads and neo-Nazis displayed ban- ropean, national) homophobic subject as merely ners with sayings like “Pitchers have big ears— the latest embodiment of antithesis to the (West - and big noses” (the Hungarian word for pitcher, ern, transnational) properly tolerant, Liberal köcsög, is a derogatory term for a gay man; a big 26 | Hadley Z. Renkin nose, of course, is a classic anti-Semitic stereo- ahistorical: merely the latest manifestation of an type). They also shouted phrases like, “soap fac- inevitable xenophobia, directed now against Jews, tory” and “[Throw the] faggots into the Danube, now against gays. Once more homophobia is and the Jews after them!”—both World War II somehow not about LGBT people themselves references easily understood by any Hungarian. at all. The first alludes to the Nazi concentration camps’ In summary, although each of these dis- use of rendered human fat to make soap, the courses adds important elements to our under- second to the notorious practice of Hungarian standing of postsocialist homophobia, they all, fascists during the 1944 Siege of Budapest of in my view, leave something critical out of the rounding up Jews and taking them to the banks picture. Psychologizing explanations preclude of the river, where they were shot and thrown consideration of homophobia’s social meanings. in. These discursive parallels have led some an- Interpretations of nationalism as fundamentally alysts to suggest that LGBT people have become heteronormative, or those that see homophobia “substitutes” for Jews as representatives of the as resulting from the association of LGBT people Nation’s internal “Other” (e.g., Graff 2006).11 with “Europe” and “the West,” or its conflation Although compelling, this notion of homo- of LGBT people and Jews, treat the political- phobia as a “replacement” for traditional Eastern semiotic topography of the Nation—or the European anti-Semitism ignores two important symbolic relations mediating the Nation’s rela- factors. First, homophobia is by no means new tionship to the transnational—as structurally in Eastern Europe. As we have seen, long-stand- fixed, and thus ahistorical: only the specific sym- ing forms of heteronormativity and homopho- bols change in different historical moments. bia mark many of the region’s dominant cultural Moreover, all erase LGBT people, and their ac- structures, including hegemonic nationalism. tion and agency, from the picture. Furthermore, although many accounts treat the public and political visibility of homosexuality in Eastern Europe as something that has only ap- Practice and its implications peared recently (e.g., for Poland, see Graff 2006), considerable evidence exists that not only is I want to suggest that we can address these lim- there a history of public presence and debate itations in current discourses on postsocialist about LGBT people going back to the late 1980s homophobia, and add significantly to our under- and early 1990s in several postsocialist coun- standings of its complex causes and meanings, tries (see Essig 1999; Kliszczyński 2001; Long by looking more closely at how LGBT people 1999; Renkin 2007a; Riszovannij 2001), but that themselves are shaping and reshaping the struc- homosexuality stood at the center of many de- tures of sentiment and power that surround bates about the Socialist project itself (Healey them in postsocialist Eastern Europe. It is not 2002; Rivkin-Fish 1999). Thus, LGBT people are enough, I argue, to consider how certain people hardly a newly stigmatized category. Second, are situated in systems of symbolic meaning— anti-Semitism remains pervasive throughout national or transnational—by others; it is essen- Eastern Europe in both discourse and everyday tial to consider how people act concretely in these practice, in ways often quite indistinguishable contexts to position themselves, and so produce from historical antecedents.12 The claim, then, their own cultural and political meanings. that gays are the new Jews in postsocialist poli- My analysis here draws on anthropological tics once again begs the question of why, in such and other theories of culture that privilege prac- strikingly visible, public fashion, LGBT people tice as the critical foundation for understanding have become such significant targets of right- social relations, structures of power and mean- wing mobilization at this particular moment in ing, and their transformations. Theories of prac- time. Moreover, here too such discourses imag- tice take social structure to be the consequence ine postsocialist homophobia as essentially of the concrete practices of culturally embedded Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 27 actors, and see their agency as crucial to trans- broader contests over postsocialist belonging. formations of social process (Bourdieu 1977; Doing so enables us to recognize, rather than deCerteau 1984; Ortner 1984). Recent work on deny, the agency of LGBT people to shape the postsocialist cultural politics also has paid close cul tural worlds in which they live, and to see attention to how new meanings emerge from them as active participants in such contests as concrete cultural practices, and reshape the well. larger structures of personal, cultural, and polit- Viewing postsocialist homophobia in this way ical meanings within which they exist (Burawoy situates its analysis within broader criticisms of and Verdery 1999; Hann 2002; Lampland 2002). “transitology” that have emerged particularly in Foremost among these has been Verdery’s (1999) anthropology. These critiques have drawn atten- trenchant exploration of how ritual practices sur - tion to the ways in which dominant discourses rounding “dead bodies” have been used through- of postsocialist “transitions” have figured them out postsocialist Eastern Europe by diverse social as literal transitions, in which once-socialist so- groups to claim and contest cultural and politi- cieties progress naturally and inevitably toward cal legitimacy. Emphasis on the centrality of con- a known destination: Western-style multicul- crete practice to establishing and resisting new tural democracy (Bernhard 2005). Resisting cultural and political meanings, however, has such teleological (and triumphalist) assump- largely been limited to the dominant categories tions, anthropologists and other critics have of postsocialist analysis: ethnicity, religion, and argued that, nineteen years after the collapse of economics. Sexuality, perhaps because it is so Eastern European socialism, the nature of post- often seen as essential difference, has been al- socialist change remains highly contested, and most entirely overlooked. Thus, these otherwise continues to be worked out through the con- influential analyses have had little effect on crete practices of the region’s inhabitants (Ber- interpretations of the politics of postsocialist dahl, Bunzl, and Lampland 2000; Burawoy and homophobia. Verdery 1999). Drawing from these theories, I propose that Utilizing these critical perspectives to re- in order to understand the current surge in pub- frame analysis of postsocialist homophobia al- lic homophobia in Eastern Europe, it is neces- lows us to use the neglected domain of sexuality sary to look at the concrete practices of LGBT to cast new light on postsocialism’s ongoing people. I suggest that in Hungary it is their ac- complexities. It is with this intent that I turn to tual, on-the-ground activities, and not simply the activist efforts of LGBT people in Hungary. their location as hypostatized identity-objects I argue that by producing, in publicly meaning- within the symbolic terrains of either national- ful ways, forms of identity that simultaneously ism or transnational politics, that have resulted claim national and transnational connections, in their current positioning at the center of both LGBT activists propose their own competing homophobic reaction and broader cultural de- vision for postsocialist Hungarian identity. This bates about belonging. This perspective can lead vision fundamentally challenges right-wing no- us to question the assumptions current dis- tions of identity and community and has con- courses of homophobia make about the cultural tributed to the dramatic growth in public and political affiliations of LGBT people, and to homophobia over the last several years, culmi- rethink their cultural meanings. It challenges nating in the attacks on the last two Pride current understandings—both right and left— Marches. Thus, it is not merely personal antipa- of LGBT people and their identities and asso- thy, or the automatic response of nationalism to ciations. It can also provide new insight into its Other, or the shifting of anti-EU sentiment right-wing homophobia, allowing us to see it as to a convenient target, which has led to the cur- a response to specific LGBT practices and claims, rent rise in public homophobia, at least in Hun- and thus not simply as either instinctive vio- gary. Rather, in addition to these factors, it is a lence or blind reaction, but as an intervention in rejection of the public practices of identity and 28 | Hadley Z. Renkin community that LGBT activists have deployed, wave rainbow flags, wear pink triangles, and bear and their implications for belonging. posters with slogans like “The Gay Family” and “Silence=Death.” Drag queens in fancy cars and gyrating disco dancers adorn the parade. Even Hungarian LGBT activism: the March’s scheduling conforms to global gay Queering belonging liturgy: its timing is carefully calculated to fit in with other European Pride Marches. These prac- Hungary’s organized sexual politics movement tices demonstrate the connections Hungarian began early compared with most other Eastern LGBT people perceive between themselves and European countries.13 The country’s first les- LGBT people and movements elsewhere. They bian/gay organization, Lambda Homerosz, was create an image of the Pride March that strongly founded in 1988, just before the collapse of the supports the ways such Marches are typically socialist government. Primarily a social group, understood by both right-wing nationalists and some of its members soon founded a new organ- analytical discourses of homophobia: as expres- ization, Szivárvány Társulás a Melegek Jogaiért sions of transnational identity and community. (Rainbow Coalition for Gay Rights), specifically Over the years, however, the Pride March dedicated to fighting for LGBT rights. Denied has also asserted powerful claims to specifically official registration, Szivárvány quickly splin- national belonging. These have been made pri- tered, giving rise to smaller activist groups. By the marily through its use of public and nationally early 1990s, a gay men’s organization, Lambda symbolic space. The first March in 1997 occurred Budapest, a telephone helpline and legal aid ser - in distinctly marginal space, emerging from one vice, Háttér Társaság a Melegekért (Háttér Sup- of the city’s few gay bars to travel along the Ko- port Society for Gays), a legal aid service, Habeus rzó, a notorious gay cruising zone. Within a few Corpus Munkacsaport (the Habeus Corpus years, however, the March had moved into Bu- Workgroup), and in 1997 a lesbian group, Labrisz dapest’s central public spaces, parading along Leszbikus Egyesület (Labrys Lesbian Associa- major streets like Andrássy út, and traversing tion), had emerged, all located in Budapest. Since prominent locations in the city center, such as then several organizations have been formed in Deák tér. It also began to appropriate nationally smaller cities.14 symbolic spaces. In 2001, the March began next to Heroes’ Square, Hungary’s most symbolically The Budapest Pride March potent national space, the site of foundational postsocialist public rituals such as the reburial These organizations have worked to support and of former prime minister Imre Nagy in 1989 strengthen LGBT identity and community in (Gal 1990; Rév 1995; Verdery 1999). In 2002, the Hungary. Most significantly, since the late 1990s March not only began next to Heroes’ Square, it they have done so by using public events to con- also crossed the Danube on one of its most cen- struct complex forms of identity and belonging tral and visible bridges, the Elizabeth Bridge. (Imre 2008; Renkin 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). The And in 2004, the March streamed over the river most important of these is the Budapest Pride on the Lánchíd, or Chain Bridge, an iconic image March. The first such mass public demonstra- of Budapest, reiterated ad infinitum in repre- tion by LGBT people in postsocialist Eastern sentations of the city, and a symbol of Hungar- Europe, the Pride March has grown from the ian national pride since the mid-nineteenth 200 people who took part in the first March in century. In these ways the Pride March has over 1997 to approximately 2,000 participants.15 time associated its participants with the spaces The Pride March presents a complex picture of a specifically Hungarian history, construct- of LGBT identity, community, and politics. Like ing LGBT people as legitimate inhabitants of other Pride Marches the world over, it is rife with national community. the iconography of global gay identity. Marchers Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 29

Thus, along with claims to global LGBT iden- Like the Pride March, the Kertbeny memo- tity, community, and politics, the Pride March rial produces complex forms of belonging. The pow erfully expresses national forms of identity memorial clearly links Kertbeny, present-day and belonging. In contrast to the ways postso- LGBT people, and transnational LGBT identity, cialist LGBT marches are typically understood, politics, and community. Speeches and writings therefore, the Budapest Pride March fuses nation- by participants consistently assert Kertbeny’s al and transnational meanings. Other concrete gay identity. They underscore the global nature statements by LGBT people at Pride Marches un- of this gayness, stressing Kertbeny’s participa- derscore this fusion. For example, the poster for tion in the international sexology movement of the 2001 March bore the silhouetted image of a his time, particularly his globally influential woman waving a rainbow flag over the Hungar- coining of the terms “homosexual” and “hetero- ian Parliament building. The poster proudly pro- sexual” (Takács 2003). The memorial also ties claimed one of the most famous verses of the re- Hungarian LGBT people into transnational gay nowned national poet Attila József: “Édes hazám, history and community practically, as it was ex- fogadj szivedbe, hadd legyek …!” (My sweet home- plicitly intended to be not merely a local ritual, land, take me to your heart—let me be/exist!). but a site of international gay “pilgrimage.”17 Image and verse joined national yearnings with At the same time, however, the memorial as- a sense of transnational gay triumph. Another serts the place of LGBT people within Hungar- poster carried in recent Marches stated simply: ian history. Its speeches and writings also stress “Magyar vagyok, Meleg vagyok, Ember vagyok” (I Kertbeny’s Hungarianness, his involvement in am Hungarian, I am Gay, I am Human). These Hungarian national literature, and his connec- and many similar expressions document the mul- tions to central figures of the country’s national- tiple understandings of identity and community cultural myth, such as revered writers Sándor of Hungarian LGBT people. Like other Pride Petöfi and János Arany. Moreover, like the Pride Marches, the Budapest March contributes in March, the Kertbeny memorial also makes pow- public, visible ways to cultural contests over be- erful statements about the presence of LGBT longing (Guss 2000). But it does so in a complex people in nationally significant space. Kertbeny’s fashion, claiming both trans national bonds and pink granite gravestone lies, and the annual me- belonging rooted specifically in the nation. morial takes place, in Budapest’s national ceme- tery, surrounded by the graves and mausoleums The Kertbeny Memorial of Hungary’s greatest heroes. The memorial’s public recognition of him as a “gay ancestor” thus The annual Pride March draws the most notice inserts LGBT people firmly within the symbolic of all LGBT events in Hungary. In recent years, genealogy of Hungarian national community. however, LGBT activists have undertaken other Through these and a range of similar actions, public actions that contest dominant concep- LGBT people in Hungary have asserted them- tions of identity and community. Among these, selves as active participants in the legitimating efforts to recover lesbian and gay histories have cultural narratives of postsocialist society, and been particularly salient.16 One such project com- thus striven to legitimate themselves as equal memorates a gay Hungarian ancestor, Károly members of that society. In doing so, they have Kertbeny, a writer, translator, researcher of ho- taken part in what has been widely recognized mosexuality, and sexual rights activist who died as a central element of postsocialist transforma- in Budapest in 1882. Following the discovery of tion: the reconfiguration of structures of cul- his unmarked grave in Budapest’s national tural and political legitimacy, and thus of the cemetery in 2001, Lambda Budapest and the gay new society’s hierarchies of power (Eglitis 2002; magazine Mások organized the dedication of Rév 1995; Verdery 1996, 1999). Critically, how- a new gravestone for Kertbeny; a memorial ser - ever, their assertions challenge typical under- vice is now held there every summer. standings of LGBT people, and their organized 30 | Hadley Z. Renkin sexual-political movements as unequivocally mit LGBT people “to march in Budapest’s cen- aligned with transnational identities, communi- tral streets and spaces.” As they put it, ties, and politics, and therefore necessarily anti- national. Instead they highlight multiple con- “We consider it unacceptable that they can walk nections and simultaneous belongings. These along Andrássy út, which was built for the mil- practices thus reconfigure postsocialist legiti- lennium, and bears the values of the ancient macy in new ways, actively destabilizing the world, as well as that the four famous historical binary oppositions between homophobic/homo- statues of Kodály körönd must be witness to sexual and nationalist/anti-national through their placards. We protest against the fact that which the meanings of LGBT people have typi- Heroes’ Square—the place of our memorial cel- cally been understood.18 ebrations of Hungarian history, where the statues of the outstanding personalities of our thousand- year history stand … is where these demonstra- Reactions to LGBT activism tions … advertising a difference foreign to our national feelings, should take place.”19 These practices of belonging have been con- tentious and consequential, as have responses to Displaying a strikingly similar spatial perspec- them by Hungary’s right-wing, even before the tive, in its July 2004 headlines describing the violent attacks of the past two summers. The his- Pride March, the right-wing newspaper Magyar tory of such reactions contradicts the common Nemzet (Hungarian Nation) proclaimed “The view that public opposition to LGBT visibility is city center belongs to the Gays”, and that “Gays fundamentally new in postsocialist society, and flood/overwhelm the main streets [of Buda - that attacks on postsocialist Pride Marches are pest].” Here, LGBT presence in public and na- novel political phenomena (see Graff 2006). In tional space is clearly seen to possess profound the Hungarian case the public nature of homo- implications for all belonging. phobic reaction is not new, but has grown in Yet for the right, it is not simply the presence size and visibility over the years, along with the of LGBT people in spaces where they should public claims of the Pride March. What began not be that is problematic, and fuels homopho- as occasional signs and isolated catcalls in the bic response, but the claims of combined na- late 1990s became organized, but still peaceful, tional and transnational belonging they invoke groups of counterdemonstrators in 2003 and there. A fascinating detail of the 2007 March 2004. In 2007, these signs of collective protest demonstrates this. Unsurprisingly, throughout erupted into violent attacks. Such a pattern of the March the attackers were infuriated by the reactions suggests the increasingly contentious presence of drag queens and scantily clad disco- nature of LGBT presence in public spaces. As dancers, and bombarded them with verbal public actions in nationally significant spaces, abuse and projectiles. Widely recognized fea- these kinds of LGBT activism speak visibly to tures of transnational gay iconography, these broader cultural contests over the boundaries of figures consistently draw right-wing ire. Yet the postsocialist belonging—who should be consid- counterdemonstrators I observed that day were ered a proper member of Hungarian society even more powerfully outraged by the sight of a and who should not. slender young man with long blond hair, who in Right-wing reactions to Pride Marches in the midst of the March bore with great pride the Budapest demonstrate clear concern about such Hungarian tricolor, embossed with the Kossuth public presence and its significance for the seal—the national coat-of-arms.20 His visible boundaries of space and society. After the 2001 embodiment of a pride simultaneously gay and March, for example, a coalition of right-wing Hungarian, of connection to both the nation groups released a public statement, demanding and to the world of global gay identity and pol- that the Budapest Chief of Police no longer per- itics, drew by far the strongest reaction that day: Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 31 a veritable storm of insults, spitting, and threats tions of the inevitable withering away of nation- barely held back by the police line. alism and the nation-state, the emergence of in- Such interpretations of the March’s signifi- clusive, democratic societies, the end of history, cance extend beyond the views of right-wing na- and the triumph of transnational community tionalists. Following the 2004 March, for exam- (Bernhard 2005, Fukuyama 1992), the domi- ple, one of Hungary’s mainstream newspapers nance of postsocialist cultural politics by a per- was so impressed by the implications of a mere ceived antagonism between the Nation and its 2,000 LGBT people appearing visibly in public Others (whether other nations, Europe, or the space that it suggested that the Pride March world) has become more powerful, rather than represented another kind of Hungarian nation less so, following the 2004 expansion of the Eu- altogether: “an alternative ‘normal Hungary’” ropean Union. The crucial question, however, is (Népszabadság Online, 7 December 2004). how different people and groups have in actual Action and rhetoric of this kind reveals that practice responded to this situation, and at- it is neither the character of LGBT people as an- tempted to negotiate new positions within it. In cient “enemies of the Nation,” nor their sym- contrast to dominant views of sexual politics, I bolic position as stand-ins for the EU, the West, suggest that the vision of identity and commu- or cosmopolitan modernity, which is ultimately nity proposed by LGBT people in Hungary at stake for Hungary’s anti-gay opposition. poses a dramatic challenge to this antagonism. These reactions suggest that LBGT people are Through events like the Pride March and the through their public actions proposing—and are Kertbeny memorial service, Hungary’s LGBT understood by the Hungarian right, and others, community consistently constructs boundaries as proposing—an alternative vision of Hungar- of belonging whose contours, by embracing ian society, one which fundamentally defies its both national and transnational meanings, fun- traditional boundaries of identity and commu- damentally defy assumptions of their necessary nity. By including themselves, as LGBT people, opposition, and undermine assumptions of the within Hungarian national-historical narrative, inevitability of the borders between them. they challenge the traditionally heteronormative This approach to questions of identity and boundaries of national belonging, asserting that community resonates closely with the claims of they too, although both “gay” and globally con- queer theoretical analysis. Emerging in the early nected, are members of the Nation. Yet precisely 1990s as a critique of both heteronormative because they insist on their identities as specifi- hegemony and lesbian and gay dependence on cally Hungarian people within the frame of identity politics, queer theory strove to confront “global gay” practice, they confuse the notion that dominant Euro-American cultural assumptions LGBT identity and politics are necessarily trans- of the fundamental nature of distinctions be- national; solely aligned with transnational iden- tween identity categories such as heterosexual tities and politics. The multiple senses of identity and homosexual. Challenging notions that sex- and community that their practices of belong- ual identities are stable and distinct, queer the- ing establish for Hungarian LGBT people thus orists argued that sexual identities, like all others, subvert the binary opposition between national are multiple, provisional, and fluid, and that to and transnational which grounds both homo- claim or act otherwise reinforces restrictive phobic oppression and its usual interpretations. identity regimes (Butler 1991; Sedgwick 1990; Seidman 1996). Queer theorists thus sought to deconstruct the “grid of cultural intelligibility” The unbearable queerness of being through which Euro-American understandings of sexual identities, practices, and politics are The rise in public homophobia in postsocialist organized (Butler 1991). Eastern Europe, and liberal responses to it, have A key element of queer theory’s critique was made it abundantly clear that despite predic- its implications for identity politics. In particu- 32 | Hadley Z. Renkin lar, queer theorists drew attention to the conse- the 2006 March, when LGBT ac- quences of sexual politics grounded in clearly tivists attempted to lay a wreath at the Tomb of demarcated categories of identity. They argued the Unknown Soldier in Red Square to demon- that such politics were necessarily exclusionary strate their participation in Russian national of forms of sexual difference that did not neatly history, police immediately broke up the March, fit into their established categories. Such con- arresting its leaders.21 Here too then, as in Hun- cerns led to a radically different notion of poli- gary, it appears to be not the purely transnational tics. This new “queer” politics strove to account character of LGBT people, but their simultane- for the ways people in actual practice experience ous claims to both national and transnational and express multiple alignments of selfhood meanings, that provoke the most violent and re- and desire, by recognizing shifting “subjectivi- pressive responses.22 ties” rather than stable “identities.” “Queering” thus came to refer not simply to the proposal of an “alternative” within existing systems of sex- Conclusion ual-political meaning and possibility, but to a radical challenge to and refusal of such systems In her study of the reactions of environmental and their founding assumptions (Berlant and activists in Hungary to threats to the well-being Freeman 1992; Boellstorff 2007; Warner 1993). of the Danube and Tisza rivers, Krista Harper The sexual politics developed by Hungarian (2005) examines how activists negotiated their LGBT people demands cultural legitimacy pre- identities and practices in ways that produced cisely by asserting connections of history, self, a complex balance between understandings and community rooted equally in domains still grounded in national discourses and perspec- considered exclusive in dominant postsocialist tives shared with international environmental discourses: the national and the transnational. discourses. Similarly, Lisa Rofel (2007) suggests In doing so, it also erases the boundaries that that new forms of sexual subjectivity, with new define these domains’ opposition. More than cultural meanings, are emerging in postsocialist simply a competing discourse, this vision con- China as people strive to balance desires for na- tests the very terms of the relationship within tional belonging with senses of connection to which the Nation, its transnational Others, and “global” gay meanings. their respective inhabitants are typically seen to These analyses of the complex interweavings operate. Such a challenge to dominant concep- of national and transnational meanings by local tions of the boundaries of postsocialist identity actors have as yet had little impact on interpre- and community, I suggest, represents a funda- tations of postsocialist sexual politics and ho- mental queering of both those boundaries and mophobia. Yet the actions of LGBT people in the cultural-political investments they organ- Hungary reflect similar desires, responses, and ize—a queering of belonging itself. strategies. As sexual minorities traditionally ex- In this light it is revealing that homophobic cluded from full membership in national com- reactions to the combining of national and trans- munity, many LGBT people in Hungary are national meanings by postsocialist Pride Marches understandably skeptical about dominant no- have not been limited to Hungary. Similarly tions of national identity and community as pri- powerful responses by right-wing nationalists mary organizing principles of society. Like other to assertions of multiple identity by LGBT peo- Hungarians, however, they also feel deeply em- ple have occurred in other countries. In Poznan bedded in cultural traditions that privilege in 2005, for example, Polish LGBT activists at- national identity and community as ways of un- tempted to begin their Equality March at a key derstanding their relationships to other people, national site, a monument to the county’s short- countries, and the world. Moreover, their expe- lived uprising in 1956, only to be forcibly pre- riences of the postsocialist period have often vented by nationalists (Graff 2007). Similarly, at underscored the painful specificities of being Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 33

Hungarian in a world in which economic, polit- and community possible, they are constructing ical, and cultural power and prestige are located themselves as everything that the standard bear- elsewhere. In such a situation, it is understand- ers of the right most fear: an embracing of those able that they strive to express senses of belong- ambiguities; a publicly visible repudiation of the ing that recognize their multiple positioning. boundaries of inclusion and exclusion that con- Thus, despite sometimes profound tensions be- stitute nationalism’s foundational ideology and tween these notions of identity and community, practice. In this sense, the queer belonging pro- the balance between them that LGBT people posed by LGBT people in Hungary does not just express reflects a powerful sense of dual habita- envision an alternative set of these boundaries; tion, in which people see themselves as partici- it denies their very conditions of possibility. pants in both simultaneously, rather than having to choose between mutually exclusive categories of belonging. Acknowledgments This analysis suggests that it is insufficient to see Hungarian (or other postsocialist) LGBT I thank Jill Owczarzak and Agnieszka Kości- people only as the symbolic representatives of ańska for organizing the original European As- other tensions, national or transnational, as do sociation of Social Anthropologists panel that current discourses of postsocialist homophobia. led to this special section. Thanks also go to Jill Although such symbolic status has clearly be- for her many helpful comments, and to the two come part of their current cultural meaning, anonymous reviewers. I am grateful to Guntra seeing them primarily in these terms leads to Aistara for comments on earlier drafts, and to their abstraction as a kind of “indicator species” Brian Porter for his support of my work on this for the production of democracy, civil society, topic. An earlier version of this article was pre- and a truly “European” civilization, or the tri- sented at the symposium “New Lines of Toler- umph of tolerant, liberal transnationalism over ance and Intolerance in Europe,” held at the illiberal nationalism. Such an interpretation, as University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, December noted earlier, rests not only on assumptions of 2007. an irreducible distinction between the two, but also on a radical erasure of LGBT people them- selves. In contrast, I have argued that we should Hadley Z. Renkin received his PhD in Anthro- see concretely; that we must look at the prac- pology from the University of Michigan in 2007. tices of LGBT people and the cultural-political He is currently a Faculty Fellow in Anthropol- meanings they produce. Doing so, I suggest, ogy and International Studies at Colby College. would allow us to see LGBT people in Eastern His research focuses on gender, sexuality, and Europe as agents, as active negotiators of the cultural citizenship in postsocialist Hungary, contentious but generative ambiguities of post- and on homophobia throughout postsocialist socialist experience. Seen in this way, their con- Eastern Europe. He has also conducted work on ceptions and practices may enable us to pose sexuality and belonging in Latvia. fundamental challenges to modes, still domi- E-mail: [email protected]. nant in “West” as well as “East,” of imagining Mailing address: Department of Anthropology, the relationships between people, states, and Colby College, 4700 Mayflower Hill, Waterville, places, and reproducing exclusionary bound- ME 04901, USA. aries between national and transnational identi- ties and communities. If this is so, it is surely no surprise that LGBT Notes people have become such potent targets of na- tionalist hatred. By embracing the changing 1. Since the summer of 2008, it is unfortunately conditions that make multiple forms of identity possible to add the Czech Republic and Bul- 34 | Hadley Z. Renkin

garia to this list. It should be noted that not all (Hungarian News Agency), 29 June 2007, public demonstrations promoting sexual mi- http://www.hirszerzo.hu/cikk.mindenki_hozzon nority rights and acceptance in these countries _magaval_egy_kamerat_melegek_ellen_vonul are called “Pride” Marches. In Poland and in _utcara_a_jobbik.38891.html. Latvia the terms “Equality” or “Tolerance” 6. Demszky: “If necessary, I too am Jewish, Gypsy, March, or Parade, have been employed instead and gay,” Hírszerző. 9 August 2007, http://www (indeed, in 2008 the name of the Hungarian .hirszerzo.hu/cikk.demszky_ha_kell_magam_ March was changed to the “Gay Dignity March” is_zsido_cigany_es_meleg_vagyok.39658.html. [Meleg Méltóság Menet]). I use the general 7. “No five-party statement about the gay festival,” term “Pride March” here for convenience. Hírszerző információ, 9 July, 2007. http://www 2. I use the term “right-wing” to refer to groups, .hirszerzo.hu/cikk.nem_lesz_otparti_nyilatkozat such as the Magyarországért Mozgalom _a_melegfesztivalrol.39679.html. (Movement for a Better Hungary [Jobbik]; 8. A more sophisticated version of this “political formed in 2003), directly involved in anti-gay, manipulation” argument depends on a similar anti-Roma, and anti-Jewish actions, as well as assumption, discussed below, that LGBT people other groups and individuals engaging in such are inevitable symbolic representatives of an activities. I resist terms such as “extreme nation- imperial, anti-national “Europe” or “West.” alists” or “far-right,” believing this minimizes 9. See, for example, the debate held in Warsaw in their presence, and obscures the perspectives 2006 by Amnesty International, titled “Are Les- they share with—and the tacit support they typ- bians Poland’s New Jews?” (Graff 2006: 445). ically receive from—established political groups 10. Gazeta Wyborcza, 25 June 2006. I thank Brian such as the main Hungarian opposition party Porter-Szűcs for bringing Stefanek’s words to (formerly the Alliance of Young Democ- my attention. rats, now Hungarian Civic Union). I use the 11. Other scholars have suggested that in certain term “right” to refer to these established groups contexts they similarly serve to replace other to highlight the continuum of socially conser- national Others, such as ethnic Russians in Lat - vative values on which these groups stand, and via (Schwartz 2005). their shared understanding of the centrality to 12. See, for example, the New York Times article, Hungarian social and political life of the Na- “Sim mering anti-semitism mars a vibrant Hun- tion. I employ the abbreviation “LGBT” to em- gary,” 7 May 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/ phasize the involvement of a range of sexual 2008/05/07/arts/design/07anti.html?sq= minority identities in these situations—an in- anti-semitism%20hungary&st=nyt&adxnnl= clusion not always recognized within postso- 1&scp=1&adxnnlx=1210346245-gPKmXR cialist (or other) sexual politics movements. In jaRhTh9tfjpZu30g. Hungary, for example, almost all “gay” people I 13. Only Slovenia’s sexual politics movement seems know identify themselves as “lesbian” or “gay,” to have begun earlier; its first organization with a very small minority identifying as bisex- formed in 1984 (Roman Kuhar, personal com- ual. Only in the last few years has there been munication). In Hungary, of course, as in many any visibility within the LGBT community for countries in Eastern Europe, informal activities transgender people (cf. Takács 2006). I inten- and building of LGBT community long pre- tionally avoid the term “queer,” sometimes used ceded the development of organized sexual pol- to refer to postsocialist sexual identities and itics. politics, because almost none of the LGBT peo- 14. Budapest remains overwhelmingly dominant in ple I know use the word—or its closest Hungar- sexual politics in Hungary, particularly in terms ian equivalent, buzi— to describe themselves. of the public visibility of LGBT people and 3. Letter from Mayor István Tarlós to PepsiSziget activism. kft, 3 July 2001, author’s files. 15. Although this can hardly compare to Western 4. Péter Tóth, the Jobbik’s Szeged branch vice- European or North American Pride Marches, president, cited in Népszabadság Online, 14 July until very recently (with the addition of large 2007. numbers of Western European and American 5. “Everyone bring a camera! The Jobbik take to visitors to Marches in places like Poland and the street against gays,” Magyar Távirati Iroda Russia) it was the largest in Eastern Europe. Homophobia and queer belonging in Hungary | 35

16. Several such projects have now been under- which national and transnational belonging are taken by both lesbian and gay men’s organiza- asserted simultaneously in these projects. This tions in Hungary. For reasons of space I examine dual claim, it seems to me, precludes the poten- only one here. For other projects, especially those tial exclusivity of either category. It is this, in- pursued by lesbians, see Imre 2008, Renkin deed, which makes it “queer”—LGBT claims to 2007b. national belonging alone are not. 17. “Adakozz a melegemlékmű létrehozásához!” (Do nate to the establishment of a gay memo- rial!), December 16, 2001, http://www.pride.hu. References 18. It is true that at a number of key moments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries groups such Adam, Barry D. 1998. Theorizing Homophobia. as gays, Jews, and others, in response to the Sexualities 1 (4): 387–404. Othering of nationalists, strove to assert national Berdahl, Daphne, Matti Bunzl, and Martha Lamp- identities, loyalties, and connections, while land, eds. 2000. Altering states: Ethnographies of maintaining senses of identity extending be- transition in Eastern Europe and the former So- yond the nation (see, for example, Mosse 1985). viet Union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan However, there are critical differences between Press. such efforts and those of present-day Hungar- Berlant, Lauren, and Elizabeth Freeman. 1992. ian LGBT activists. The most significant here is Queer nationality. Boundary 2 19 (1): 149–80. the level of sustained, concrete public action of Bernhard, Michael. 2005. Institutions and the fate of present-day activists and thus the ability of their democracy: Germany and Poland in the twentieth claims to engage with broader cultural debates. century. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. 19. Joint press release by the Hungarian Political Boellstorff, Tom. 2007. A coincidence of desires: An- Prisoners’ Collective, the Political Convict Com - thropology, queer studies, Indonesia. Durham, munity, the Historical Justice Committee, and NC: Duke University Press. the Proven Hungarian Freedom-Fighters’ World Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of prac- Collective, Magyar Távirati Iroda (Hungarian tice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. News Agency), July 2001. Bunzl, Matti. 2004. Symptoms of modernity: Jews 20. The Kossuth seal was the national coat-of-arms and queers in late-twentieth-century Vienna. of Hungary’s brief moment of national inde- Berkeley: University of California Press. pendence from Habsburg rule in 1848–49, and Burawoy, Michael, and Katherine Verdery, eds. is a powerful icon of the country’s national-his- 1999. Uncertain transition: Ethnographies of torical myth. The seal was reinstated, after much change in the postsocialist world. Lanham, MD: debate, as the country’s coat-of-arms after the Rowman & Littlefield. collapse of socialism in 1989. To bear it on a flag Butler, Judith. 1991. Imitation and gender insubor- emphasizes a far more emphatically national dination. In Inside/Out: Lesbian theories/Gay sentiment than that expressed by the tricolor theories, ed. Diana Fuss, 13–31. London: alone. Routledge. 21. “Banned Moscow gay rally broken up,” BBC, 27 de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday May 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/ life. Berkeley: University of California Press. 5023466.stm. Eglitis, Daina Stukuls. 2002. Imagining the nation: 22. Making such claims to national history, identity, History, modernity, and revolution in Latvia. and community may have a problematic side as University Park: Pennsylvania State University well; I do not mean to suggest that any politics, Press. even a “queer” one, is ever free of power. As I Essig, Laurie. 1999. Queer in Russia: A story of self, have noted elsewhere (Renkin 2007a), asser- sex, and the other. Durham, NC: Duke Univer- tions of national belonging may reinforce the sity Press. established criteria of such belonging, thus Fassin, Eric. 2007. Our heterosexual culture and strengthening the exclusion of other Others their homophobic cultures: Two versions of Eu- without the ability (or desire) to make their own ropean sexual democracy. Paper presented at the claims. I would argue that this is unlikely in this American Anthropological Association annual case, however, precisely because of the ways in meeting, San Francisco, December. 36 | Hadley Z. Renkin

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