The Sisters' Second Act

Friday, Mar. 22, 2002
The song "Only Love" gave a Slovene transvestite trio called "The Sisters" top honors at the domestic Eurovision song contest, but the response from some segments of society since the win has been anything but loving. Homosexual-rights groups say the victory has actually unleashed the homophobia buried in Slovenian society.

The results of a public opinion poll by the weekly Nedelo published on 3 March indicated that just over half of Slovenes — 51.4% — feel that a group of transvestites should not represent Slovenia at the Eurovision song contest in Estonia on 25 May. And the leader of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SDS), Janez Jansa, said that the song contest issue, along with other simmering social conflicts, was an indicator of a "crisis of values" in Slovenia.

As allegations of intolerance against alternative lifestyles grow louder, the post-contest squabbles have reached the Slovenian parliament and echoed across Slovenia's borders to the European Parliament. For the small Alpine nation of 2 million — eager to become a member of the European Union in 2004 and among the leading candidates to be invited to join NATO at the alliance's November 2002 summit in Prague — the bad publicity is far from welcome.

European Parliament member Lousewies van der Laan — who chairs the European Parliament's committee on citizens' freedoms and rights, justice, and home affairs — said on 2 March that she was shocked to learn about the debate on sexual minorities. "Slovenia already has a poor reputation because of what happened during the referendum on artificial insemination [when 72% of Slovene voters voted against allowing single women to undergo artificial insemination]. Now that the results of the Eurovision contest are being debated and the issue of gay rights is coming up, it confronts us with the fact that Slovenia is perhaps not yet ready for E.U. membership," van der Laan said. She added that respect for people, regardless of lifestyle, is an integral part of the democratic values of European society.

Although The Sisters received only a tiny fraction of the public "tele-votes" on 16 Feb., the group triumphed after they received a first-place ranking from the two juries. The popular Slovenian singer Karmen Stavec was the crowd favorite according to the tele-voting but took second place for the second year in a row. But the results of the tele-voting, where TV viewers could call in their vote, were marred by controversy after it came out that there had been three extra minutes of unannounced voting.

Just three days later, the editor of TV Slovenia's Entertainment Program, Misa Molk, annulled the tele-voting and announced that jury victory of The Sisters would stand. Unhappy with the decision, TV Slovenia General Manager Aleks Stakul on 26 February said that he would ask the station's Managing Council to allow the vote to be redone. The European Broadcasters Union (E.B.U.) rules give the public a 50 percent vote in the overall decision, and since the public voice at the domestic contest had only been counted as a third of the total, a revote should take place, Stakul insisted.

Suddenly The Sisters were staring down a second hurdle on their way to Tallinn. Gay and lesbian rights groups cried foul: The same procedures had been used last year when the tele-voting process broke down and the results were annulled, leaving the decision to the two juries. Nobody complained last year about the votes being disregarded — and TV Slovenia didn't come under the microscope or experience public pressure from some of their subscribers refusing to pay monthly subscription fees, as happened this year.

"In the current climate, any new revote would be a referendum for or against intolerance," Miha Lobnik, a representative of the Slovenian homosexual rights organization Legetbitra, told journalists on 27 Feb. Lobnik called the Eurovision brouhaha a disguise for the real debate about "the right to be who you want to be — a transvestite, homosexual, heterosexual, or something else."

Legetbitra and other Slovenian gay and lesbian support groups, along with several nongovernmental organizations, issued a statement calling the recount proposal "an indicator of obvious homophobia and fears of those who are different."

The day before TV Slovenia's Council debated Stakul's proposal, gay and lesbian groups held a press conference in front of TV Slovenia's building in Ljubljana. The demonstrators carried a giant rainbow flag — an international symbol of the lesbian and gay movement — and a dedicated fan of The Sisters showed up at the rally, handing out the group's symbol: red hearts with wings.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people participated in heated, sometimes rabidly and violently antihomosexual Internet chatroom discussions and called in to radio stations to complain about The Sisters' victory, voicing doubts about the trio's ability to represent Slovenia properly in Estonia. There was also a small minority who spoke up in defense of The Sisters.

The story dominated the media landscape, but even outlets that might be expected to denounce The Sisters — such as the Catholic Church-run weekly Druzina (Family) — could not completely deny the appeal of the trio. Almost three-quarters of Slovenian citizens identify themselves as Catholic.

In a 3 March commentary, Druzina wrote: "Three brothers or sisters — who knows what they are — have been entrusted to present an original portrait of Slovenia in this year's European song contest, all based on the vote of TV Slovenia's first lady [Molk], who decided that the public doesn't count. Slovenia will thus be performing as a totalitarian country at the European song contest but will be dressed in the most democratic, open-minded, and avant-garde costumes. Under the costumes, fists are hiding, ready to settle accounts with any competition invented by another European nation, and from that angle, the expert juries couldn't have picked a better winner."

Some commentators said The Sisters situation has been a good eye-opener for Slovenian public awareness — enforcing the ideal that people with different sexual orientations exist throughout society. Until the trio's victory, homosexuals had been accepted by exclusion — so long as they stayed in places that were known as gay and lesbian meeting points, there were few problems.

The Sisters finally had their tickets to Tallinn confirmed, but the European Parliament's van der Lann was not convinced that there was a great degree of tolerance in Slovene society toward alternative lifestyles. "The explanations from Slovene officials that the controversy surrounding Slovenia's selection for the Eurovision Song Contest are not connected to homophobia have not been satisfactory," van der Laan said on 4 March after talking to Slovene government officials. "This is a clear sign of homophobia," the deputy said and promised to keep monitoring developments.

This article was edited and adapted from Transitions Online. A longer version is available at: http://www.tol.cz www.tol.cz

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