Homophobia in Latvia is still alive and kicking

Alison Sparks
2 min readJun 10, 2022
Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash.

While I am proud to be Latvian, I’m embarrassed to see how homophobic this country is. As I walk down the street, I see a coach advertising people to vote for a natural family. A union between a man and a woman, they say, without realizing how truly homophobic and absurd this statement is. And out of all months, during the pride month?

The truth is — no one is trying to eradicate heteronormative families. Get married, have sex, have children — the gays aren’t stopping you. What we truly want is to be able to get married to the love of our life, regardless of their gender, and be able to raise a family just like you are. Why is it so hard to understand? As a bisexual woman, I am truly sick of hearing straight people saying that we want to brainwash the kids to become queer. If parents were really powerful enough to influence their kid’s sexual orientation, wouldn’t I be straight by now? But I’m not.

After spending almost four years living in the United Kingdom, I have come to see how truly close-minded my own country is. Love is love, but you won’t ever fully understand that, will you? God forbid to for two men or women to kiss in public. That’s perverse! Or so you say when you sexualize every queer union ever, not realizing that two same sex people can develop romantic feelings for each other and be as adorable as that heterosexual couple you were just swooning over on the TV screen.

When will this change? When we will have equal rights, the same as all heterosexual couples get? I truly hope that I’ll live long enough to experience it, because for now my heart breaks seeing the current attitude of this country towards queer people.

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Alison Sparks

Just a writer, sharing my musings on sex, sexuality, sex work, mental health and LGBTQ+ topics.