'How many homosexual couples let go of each-other's hands when they arrive in Sofia?' Credit: PA Images / Valentina Petrova
I am in Bulgaria for the Christmas and New Year holidays again and I am in a place that is supposedly my “home”, with my homophobic family who are convinced that they love me unconditionally. Last year, around this same time, I quit my job as a programme manager of the Bulgarian LGBTI-organization Bilitis due to a major burnout. I was frustrated with living in Sofia, a city covered in swastikas, and decided it was time to stop fearing getting attacked on the street. I moved to Spain, where I could hold my partner's hand in public again. However, as soon as it was time to come “home”, the illusion we lived in suddenly faded away and the cold thought of having to face my own family’s homophobia, as well as that of the entire society I was brought up in, settled in.
Most LGBTI people in Bulgaria are forced to lead a double life, or migrate in order to express their sexual orientation “freely”. Although there are hardly any official national statistics on attitudes towards LGBTI people, the results of a European Union survey in 2015 showed that 68 percent of the population opposed same-sex marriage, which has been banned by the government since 1991. The vast majority of Bulgarians see these desires as a sickness or deviance, but never, ever, as something “natural’’ (whatever this word should mean).
