In front of St. Mark's Church in the center of Belgrade, twenty-seven-year-old Jana Krstić crossed herself and lit a candle.
While the wick crackles and burns, the melting wax flowing down the entire length of the candle, the Orthodox Christian Jana recalls the rainy September 17, 2022.
Then she came to the same church, lit a candle and went to the Pride Parade in Belgrade for the first time, an event that brought together LGBT+ people and their allies in a short protest procession for greater rights of this community in Serbia.
"I was baptized as a child, but I didn't attach importance to it.
"I realized I was a lesbian in my teenage years, and I only discovered Orthodoxy during my studies," she tells the BBC in Serbian.
Despite harsh statements against LGBT+ people from both the top of the Serbian Orthodox Church and believers, Jana says that she is not bothered by the fact that she is both a lesbian and an Orthodox Christian.
"My sexuality is what it is, and my religiosity is a matter of choice, so I don't think other people should have a problem with that."
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Condemning comments are heard from the top of the Serbian Orthodox Church before every Pride Parade, there is no definitive and clear position on the issue of the LGBT+ community.
Although the patriarch Porphyry declared that he has understanding for same-sex communities as long as they are not called marriage, he also called for the cancellation of Europride in Belgrade, in September 2022.
The SPC did not respond to the BBC's question about the church's attitude towards believers who are not heterosexual.
Ivica Živković, an Orthodox theologian, does not see sporadic stormy reactions of certain church officials as opinions and attitudes, but as "statements placed in the media, which do not bind anyone as a believer or member of the Christian community."
"Until today, the Church has not considered this issue in a parliamentary manner, as it has always done in history when sensitive controversial issues have arisen, nor has it allowed a free and peaceful consideration of opposing arguments, so that we could talk about the position taken," Živković told the BBC. in Serbian.
Religious LGBT+ people are doubly marginalized, says sociologist Miloš Jovanović.
"First of all, they are marginalized because they are LGBT+ people, and it happens that they are also left aside in their own community, because they are believers and members of the SPC from which the messages come directed against this community," said a sociologist from Nis to the BBC in Serbian.
Before God draped in a rainbow flag
The photo of smiling priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church posing with the volunteers of the Pride Info Center in Belgrade during preparations for the celebration of the city's glory of the Savior's Day made writer Stefan Mihajlovski happy.
In that photo, Stefan saw the union of two, seemingly opposed, worlds to which he belongs - the LGBT+ community and religion.
"The LGBT+ community and the Orthodox Church are parts of my identity that I want to reconcile," the twenty-six-year-old, who identifies as a queer man, told the BBC in Serbian.
It's queer term and a theoretical-activist approach that re-examines identity politics - gender, sex, sexuality and definitions of family, but is often used as appointment which unites the entire LGBT+ community.
Stefan was not always an Orthodox believer, but he never rejected the existence of God.
"It just broke in college and I realized that I was part of the church and I try to live up to it as much as possible."
However, this would not have happened if he had not gone to a monastery in Serbia.
"I was talking to the monk there and I was trying to break down and say that I'm not heterosexual.
"My sexuality was not of interest to that monk, he said: 'Let it go, the Lord is here to judge, tell me how yours are, do you have other problems'."
Jana Krstić discovered religion during her philosophy studies.
"We celebrated glory in the house, celebrated Christmas and Easter, but we were never religious, it was all just customs," says this woman with a somewhat symbolic last name.
However, reading the required books at university, she entered into the mystery of faith.
"I am an Orthodox Christian, but I am affected by statements from the Serbian Orthodox Church.
"I think that most priests and bishops do not represent the true face of Christianity, especially when they humiliate women and LGBT+ people."
Jana goes to church, but says that, like every Christian, she believes that God is always there and that church is not the only place where she can pray.
She hopes that one day Orthodox believers will understand Christ's messages of love and that individuals will not send messages of hatred against her as a lesbian and other LGBT+ people.
Unlike Stefan and Jana, Vuk Adžić, a transgender man from Montenegro, attended liturgies and was part of the church from an early age.
"My parents weren't religious, but my uncle took me to liturgies," Vuk, who was born Milena, told the BBC in Serbian.
Going to church, he adds, brought him peace.
"If it weren't for God and prayer, I don't know how I would admit to myself that the body I was born into is not the way I feel it."
He spent the difficult journey of transition from woman to man in prayers in the church, and before the final operation, he had one wish.
"I wasn't baptized, and I didn't want to go to surgery without God's blessing."
For a month, he was crossing the thresholds of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral in order to give him a blessing for baptism.
"Finally, the then Metropolitan Amfilochius gave his blessing and I was baptized.
"I wanted that, if something happened, I would die like Vuk, not like Milena."
Domestic violence, life in the shelter of the LGBT Network Progress in Podgorica, changing cities - all this was part of his life.
"The only constant in my life is the church," says Vuk.
Even today, he regularly attends religious services.
"I'm leaving for myself, not for others, and whether I'm accepted by other believers - that's up to them."
Watch the video: Europride 2022 - In rainy and blocked Belgrade
'Fear of facing one's own shadow or a trial of faith'
Unlike Islam, Judaism and Protestant Christian denominations, Orthodoxy does not control the private and daily life of believers, says sociologist Jovanović.
"The reason for the messages against LGBT+ people from some Christians is the significant increase in nationalism in the church in the last thirty years.
"Everything that does not serve the purpose of increasing the nation - is not desirable for believers and priests with such an attitude," explains Jovanović.
Apart from a few passages in the Old Testament, the Laws of Moses and the apostle Paul's epistles, Jana Krstić did not find any other obstacles for LGBT+ believers.
"As these books were written in strict patriarchal times, the position of women was not discussed - it was known that they had to obey their husbands and bear children," he says.
There are archaic expressions in the Holy Scriptures that contain a sign of value and a sign of condemnation, theologian Živković points out.
Some of them are "foreigners", "heathens", "idolaters", which once, in a given context, were used for members of other nations and religions, but today this is no longer the case.
Similarly, "the biblical term 'effeminate' (as gay men are called in the Bible), in order to understand its meaning, requires serious philological analysis and clarification of the historical context in which it is used".
"In any case, it should not be used as an ideological weapon with which someone, referring to God and the truth of faith, will dispute the rights of today's LGBT population," explains Živković.
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In general, LGBT+ issues are still a taboo topic in contemporary Christianity, the theologian points out.
"There are many reasons for that. It can also be the fear of facing one's own shadow or the test of one's own faith.
"Many confuse the Christian faith with the ancient religious morality of pure and impure, so that under the prism of Christianity they try to impose some natural facts and ready-made biopolitical solutions," Živković believes.
Judgment about other people's virtues and other people's sexuality should be left to God, he says.
"It can only be important for us what we judge, that is, whether we will allow any characteristics of others to become authoritative and more important than Christ's commandment of love, which includes every person, recognizes their inalienable dignity, presence and equality".
However, Stefan Mihajlovski says that in addition to the fact that believers should respect the rights of other people in a Christian manner, LGBT+ people should also respect the rights of religious people.
"Last year, at Europride, one of the participants took a photo of his bare buttocks in front of St. Mark's Church.
"It's unacceptable because if we want someone to see us as people, then we have to be people too."
What kind of messages came from the SPC about LGBT+ people
In the first address after enthronement in February 2021, Patriarch Porfirije, unlike his predecessors, showed understanding for the pressures faced by the LGBT+ community and showed his readiness for the church to accept same-sex unions, as long as they are not called marriage.
"When it comes to the eventual law, of course we cannot be in favor of calling same-sex unions the same name as unions of a man and a woman, to say the least," said the then newly elected head of the SPC in an interview with RTS.
However, a little more than a year later, the statements of the head of the Orthodox Church in Serbia were different.
"Not every freedom is salutary and meaningful - hence, for us Orthodox Christians, LGBT ideology is unacceptable.
"But we speak as Christians and that's why we underline and add that we are at the same time against any kind of violence, contempt, persecution and branding of those who share those ideas," Porfirius said on "prayer for the sanctity of family and marriage" in front of the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade on September 11, 2022.
SPC then called for the cancellation of Europride, held a few days later.
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Among the loudest opponents of the rights of LGBT+ people and their public representation was the former metropolitan of Montenegrin-coastal Amfilohije, who died in October 2020.
This high-ranking SPC bishop, who allowed Vuk Adžić to be baptized under that name in the church, will be remembered for publicly uttering curses and accusing LGBT+ people in the Balkans.
Amfilohije is just before the adoption of the Law on Same-Sex Marriage in Montenegro in July 2020. equated homosexuality with infanticide.
For the devastating floods that hit the Balkans in 2014 he blamed drag queen Conchita Wurst's victory at Eurovision.
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The attitude of other religions towards LGBT+ people in the Balkans
The head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, has publicly supported the LGBT+ community's fight for greater rights several times.
He was with the heads of the Protestant churches of England and Scotland during his stay in South Sudan condemned the laws of more than 50 countries that discriminate against LGBT+ people.
People with "homosexual tendencies" are children of God and should be welcomed into churches, Pope Francis said.
There are no theological obstacles for LGBT+ people to be part of the church community, says Aleksandar Ninković, a Catholic priest and theologian, for the BBC in Serbian.
"Like all the rest of us sinners, they can be part of the church if they want to and if they respect the dogmas," says Ninković.
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The Roman Catholic Church has prescribed seven sacraments for its believers, rites that symbolically bind believers to the church.
Among them are baptism, confession, communion, as well as marriage.
"Our church says that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, so LGBT+ people cannot receive this holy sacrament, but others can if they want," says theologian Ninković.
Whether it will change depends on the Holy See, the supreme authority of the Catholic Church.
However, Kristijan Zeba, a Catholic priest from the settlement of Srdoči in the Croatian city of Rijeka, he refused in August 2022 to baptize the child of a lesbian couple.
Same-sex marriages in Croatia have been allowed by law since 2016, while the adoption of children is made possible by adoption of the law in May 2022.
However, that didn't stop Zeba from refusing to baptize the child that this couple got through artificial insemination.
Ten years earlier, in 2012, the organizers of Pride in Split asked the State Prosecutor's Office to initiate proceedings against priest of the Catholic Church in Croatia, Ante Mateljan.
He, the organizers claimed, during the service on May 7 on the feast of Saint Duja, the patron saint of the city of Split, called the faithful to lynch the participants of Pride, calling the event "an anti-procession that insults Christian virtues."
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In North Macedonia, the bishop of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Jakov Stobiski, was asked to apologize to the LGBT+ community in this country for "publicly expressed attitudes that are humiliatingly offensive and degrading towards transgender people and that encourage hatred towards non-heterosexual people".
"Bishop MPC said trans people 'suffer from mental disorders' and equated them with pedophiles and Satanists," it is stated in the announcement Coalition of Margina, united organizations for LGBT+ rights in North Macedonia.
However, Bishop Jakov said he did not want to apologize.
"I am ready to be judged for speaking and confessing the truth," wrote Bishop Jakov Stobiski.
Rijaset of the Islamic Community of Serbia, Mešihat of the Islamic Community in Serbia and the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina have not responded to the BBC's questions about the attitude towards LGBT+ believers in these Muslim communities in the Balkans until the publication of this text.
On the eve of the fourth Pride Parade in Sarajevo in June 2023, Rijaset of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and Herzegovina he told the believers to "distance themselves from the announced procession and other activities that promote sin and debauchery".
Rijaset also referred to the Conclusion of the Council of Muftis held on December 15, 2015, which emphasized that "homosexuality in Islam is a great sin, believers are urged not to approach it".
The BBC did not receive answers from the Jewish community to questions about how Judaism views LGBT+ believers and whether there are obstacles to their participation in this religion.
Watch the video: "Many can't accept that I'm a gay Muslim"
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