I just heard about a parade that took place yesterday to promote diversity that went awry when the participants, some of whom happened to be homosexual, were harassed and even attacked by nationalist youth. In Armenia, gay bashing is a normal thing.

As yet another paradox, Armenian politicians defend the actions of homophobes, claiming that homosexuals are defaming Armenian society and values and that something should be done about it, to paraphrase. As has been reported repeatedly in the news, two National Assembly members representing the socialist ARF-Dashnaktsutyun party made public statements to that effect, defending their decisions to bail out two vandals who bombed a bar called DIY on May 8, a place where gays socialize.

The spokesman of the Republican party even came out and said that homosexuals “are perverting our society, are defaming the Armenian national identity.” According to a survey conducted last year by Public Information and Need for Knowledge (PINK), out of 1189 people surveyed 72 percent believe that the government needs to do more to crack down on homosexuals. Like it’s their frigging business. It was only in 2003 when the law making homosexuality a criminal offense was overturned. And if you claim to be gay you can avoid military service since you are considered to be “mentally ill.”

This is the same society in which young women, to preserve their “virginity,” commonly agree to be sodomized by their suitors to demonstrate their love and dedication to their men. Meanwhile, you see young guys holding hands, kissing and caressing each other in plain daylight, calling each other what would be translated as sweetie or baby — they are straight, although if you didn’t understand the perplexing youth culture here you would think that they were indeed gay. The hypocrisy of the majority in Armenia is really appalling.

There were videos of the parade and protests against it on the Internet, which showed chaotic scenes and it wasn’t clear at first who was on what side until I read an explanation from my cousin Haig as well as some news reports. To shed light on the situation he wrote “Today is International World Cultural Diversity Day. So  www.pinkarmenia.org along with some other organizations held a Diversity March. This was interpreted as a gay parade and these cavemen showed up singing old Armenian revolutionary songs and started harassing the marchers calling them names and spitting on them and even attacking them physically. They kept chanting ’send the fags to Baku’ and ‘you’re not Armenians’ and ‘you are Turks’. Then they blocked off the final end location of the march” which was the Painters’ Union on Abovyan Street.

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