Regarding the broadcast of the show “Jutro” on TV Prva—in which guests Dragan Koprivica and Mitar Šušić spread hate speech and presented a series of dangerous misinformation targeting the LGBTIQ community, accompanied by a concerning amount of ignorance—Queer Montenegro, Association Spectra, Juventas, Stana, and ERA – LGBTI Equal Rights Association state that the expression of identity and the right to public assembly are not negotiable categories. We will continue to “fly our flags” as long as hate is promoted in the public sphere and as long as there are attempts in Montenegro to strip LGBTIQ persons of their right to be seen and heard. We categorically refuse to consent to the darkness that, under the guise of preserving values, is being imposed as the only permissible form of “tradition.”
On the other hand, the traditional lack of scientific basis, which once again served as a smokescreen for hatred, testifies to a dangerous attempt to revise facts through the direct pathologization of identity. Lawyer Šušić’s speculations about homosexuality as a result of “biological and hormonal imbalance” and “illness” directly ignore decades of medical consensus, while the shameful association of LGBTIQ persons with the most severe forms of criminal behavior serves exclusively to spread fear and stigma.
Furthermore, Šušić’s unacceptable and alarming tendency to declare the LGBTIQ community an “anti-culture” is a deliberate attempt to dehumanize and erase an entire social category from the cultural fabric of Montenegro. Labeling the history, creativity, and the very existence of one’s fellow citizens as “anti-culture” represents a radical right-wing attempt to establish ideological hegemony over what culture truly is—a space of freedom, not a prison for dissenters.
It is also devastating that guests are given a public platform to stimulate a fear of knowledge, portraying the Manual for Educators—which is based on verified facts—as an “ideological instrument” that allegedly “maims people.” In this tone, through manipulation, Šušić encourages viewers to consider “alternative methods of education,” openly suggesting to parents that they withdraw their children from an educational system that teaches them that people different from themselves exist. The intellectual and moral repression promoted by the aforementioned lawyer as a “solution” is, in fact, the only real goal of the ideological system he fervently advocates for.
Therefore, despite pseudo-historical narratives about the fall of civilizations due to the visibility of people with diverse sexual and gender identities, we remind the public that LGBTIQ persons, their families, and partnerships are a legal and social reality in Montenegro. The existing Law on Life Partnership of Persons of the Same Sex, as well as the forthcoming Law on Legal Gender Recognition Based on Self-Determination and all accompanying laws, are necessary civilizational steps toward the full freedom of all citizens—steps they will have to come to terms with. Consequently, claims that the LGBTIQ community denies the institution of the family are malicious distortions; in our case, the family is not denied but expanded, while the guests of the show attempt to reduce it to an instrument for excluding those who do not fit into their narrow ideological and gender norms.
Meanwhile, the “elephant in the room” remains the fact that the Thirteenth of July Award, which celebrates the libertarian spirit of Montenegro and the struggle against oppression, belongs to Dragan Koprivica—a man who actively calls for the social exclusion of an entire category of citizens. His conspiracy theories about “privileged LGBT circles” where employment is allegedly conditional are in direct contradiction to the Montenegrin reality, where it is precisely LGBTIQ persons who suffer daily mobbing and discrimination in the workplace.
Finally, the editorial policy of TV Prva is deeply concerning for normalizing such discourse. The “dumbing down” of society does not come from human rights manuals, but from a media space that sells insults and ignorance under the mask of tradition. LGBTIQ persons are not ideological weapons, but citizens of this country who refuse to submit to the ideological systems openly promoted by the guests of this show. That is why we are here, and we will fight for a Montenegro that has room for everyone—not just a few quasi-traditionalists who are, in reality, ideological henchmen willing to throw someone’s children under the wheels of an oppressive right-wing machine.
