In the current climate, it would be worthwhile to reflect on the accomplishments of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a British group formed during the 1984 miners’ strike.1 The group created one of the most powerful examples of solidarity between workers and the LGBT+ movement. What began as support for a labour struggle under Thatcher’s draconian rule evolved into mutual recognition, with union members – initially sceptical – attending Pride marches in ever-greater numbers.
This unlikely alliance helped persuade the Labour Party to endorse gay and lesbian rights in 1985 – a decision that would ultimately pave the way for broader legal recognition, including same-sex marriage. This moment in recent history reveals the power of alliances based on a shared sense of marginalisation. The miners, underpaid and brutalised by Thatcherite austerity, found common ground with sexual minorities, who had long faced criminalisation, pathologisation, and systemic violence, from prison sentences in nineteenth-century Britain to death camps in Nazi Germany. Solidarity became not just a political strategy but a lived necessity.
The modern gay liberation movement has deeper roots in a cross-class alliance than many people might recall today. The Third World Gay Revolution,2 a group that emerged in the wake of Stonewall, rejected the nuclear family as a capitalist institution that produced and reinforced both heterosexual and homosexual roles for the sake of social control and labour discipline. The Gay Liberation Front’s 1971 magazine cover, depicting Che Guevara in full makeup, wasn’t an ironic gesture – it embodied the revolutionary ethos of the time, one that envisioned queer struggle as inseparable from anti-capitalist struggles.
Although marginalised over time, that spirit did not vanish entirely.3 Instead, it survived in places where the Western gay rights movement would least expect it to. In Cuba, where Fidel Castro publicly apologised for the mistreatment of homosexuals decades ago, the country has recently passed what is arguably the world’s most progressive Family Code. The law, endorsed by a wide majority in a national referendum, not only legalises same-sex marriage but also broadens the very definition of family, recognising relationships based on cohabitation, mutual support and care that extend far beyond blood or romantic bonds. This is a rare example of socialist legal reform that has surpassed liberal democracies in its affirmation of queer lives.
As neoliberalism took hold in the 1980s, the gay movement – especially in the Euro-Atlantic world – began to change. The politics of collective struggle gave way to identity-based inclusion within existing structures. Class was pushed aside, and consumerism became a substitute for liberation. Paradoxically, what emerged was a form of liberal tolerance that could coexist comfortably with xenophobia, nationalism and imperial violence.4
In Serbia, the modern history of the LGBT+ movement – at least its public and most visible dimension – begins with the first Pride parade in 2001, which ended in violence. This event had both political and epistemic significance: from that moment on, it became impossible to claim that non-heterosexual people did not exist in Serbia. Although later attempts to organise Pride were often banned or cancelled, it has been held regularly since 2014, although its political and social resonance has fluctuated. Over the years, many participants have carried slogans expressing solidarity with workers, emphasising that gays and lesbians are part of the working class and often face additional discrimination, such as being fired for their sexuality, being humiliated or being forced to work for lower pay.
This kind of solidarity, however, has rarely translated into concrete alliances. The LGBT+ movement has largely remained disconnected from workers’ protests and union activity, such as the demonstrations held by Serbian raspberry growers in 2011. Despite the regime subjecting both groups to repression, there was no shared recognition of their oppression. As someone who has been active in the movement for decades, I have repeatedly emphasised the need to link class and queer issues. This stems not just from ideological commitments but also from the very roots of the modern LGBT+ struggle, which has never solely been about identity but has also sought universal emancipation, including through race and class struggles.
It was only around 2022 that this broader, solidarity-based perspective began to gain traction in civic circles. The feminist and philosopher Adriana Zaharijević articulated the idea that Pride should not be a narrow celebration of sexual identity but a rallying point for all those who are marginalised – workers, poor families, single mothers and others whose lives are systematically devalued, whether by the traditional order or by European liberalism. Although I had long promoted similar ideas in Serbia, their appearance in the respected liberal outlet Peščanik signalled a slow shift in how these connections were understood and discussed.
However, the long-standing challenge of allying with the working class should not be overlooked. Homophobia has often been one of the main barriers to solidarity from that side, pushing the LGBT+ movement to find its allies mostly among middle-class intellectuals and artists. This has kept the movement in a social “ivory tower,” where Pride events often become spectacles of elite endorsement, featuring ceremonial speeches by Western diplomats and cultural figures, while remaining disconnected from the everyday struggles of ordinary people.
This may now be starting to change. In 2024 and 2025, a noticeable shift occurred in how most LGBT+ NGOs approached Pride. As the largest and most visible protest, which often reaches beyond urban centres into ‘inner Serbia,’ Pride has begun to expand its focus, just like the president of the National Assembly, Ana Brnabić – an open lesbian – was seen and heard live across the country. The recent wave of student protests seems to have marked a turning point. Many LGBT+ organisations publicly supported these protests, moving beyond their usual areas of activity and aligning themselves with broader political demands. They realised that living in an enormously corrupt state affects everybody, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
This kind of cross-movement engagement highlights an important point made by the French philosopher Alain Badiou: popular political uprisings cannot remain confined to the domain of bourgeois youth. They must connect with workers and the proletarian struggle to have a real impact. This insight applies directly to LGBT+ activism: the movement must break free from the NGO framework, which all too often operates within the implicit boundaries of the capitalist system. Within that system, class exploitation is rarely named; instead, we hear about “economic empowerment” or the cost of excluding “sexual minorities” from full market participation. This is the language of pink capitalism, not liberation.
Equally crucial is the “descent to the people” – the need to engage with the working-class majority, which encompasses most LGBT+ people. Without challenging entrenched prejudices among this demographic, real social change is impossible. Despite the symbolic significance of having a lesbian prime minister with a wife and child, this visibility has not translated into greater safety or equality. The gap between a state that projects an image of tolerance and a society that remains deeply homophobic persists. Gay men still hide their faces on Grindr, the dominant dating app for same-sex encounters.
The state’s commitment to equality is still questionable. In 2021 the Serbian president declared he would not sign the Law on Same-Sex Partnerships, effectively shelving it. Complaints of discrimination filed by organisations such as Belgrade Pride and Da se zna! remain unresolved (115 cases of discrimination were reported last year). According to a 2024 EU Agency for Fundamental Rights survey, fear, violence, and discrimination remain rampant: 80 per cent of LGBT+ people in Serbia avoid holding hands in public and have reported discrimination at work or when seeking employment. In addition, 50 per cent avoid public spaces out of fear, and 33 per cent have considered suicide.
Meanwhile, Pride’s attendance has stagnated. In contrast, the student protests have attracted huge crowds – over three hundred thousand people on 15 March 2025 – reviving solidarity networks that connect rural and urban populations and highlighting labour rights. Aligning with this energy offers a chance for the LGBT+ movement to reclaim its radical roots. The age of isolation must end. In an era increasingly dominated by right-wing ideologies – from Trump and Putin to Meloni, Weidel and Orbán – solidarity is not just a strategic choice but a political necessity.
In that spirit, one clear and immediate recommendation emerges: the student movement and LGBT+ community should come together for Belgrade Pride in September 2025. For the first time, the event’s list of demands includes a specific social issue: a call for the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Policy to urgently regulate the work of field outreach social providers. Doing so would enable vulnerable individuals and families to access vital health and social services. This would be a small but significant step towards making Pride more than just a celebration; it could become a place where people come together to fight for change and achieve shared emancipation.
- In a BBC editorial titled “How Supporting Miners Led to Same-Sex Marriage,” journalist Gareth Lewis traces this history. See: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722z4qyed1o
- The 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, which is often romanticised as a spontaneous uprising for sexual freedom, was deeply shaped by issues of race and class. Activists of that era did not seek inclusion into the status quo but rather its transformation. See: https://pinko.online/pinko-1/third-world-gay-revolution-archive
- The 1970s in the US and Europe were marked by upheaval and experimentation, which nurtured this revolutionary imagination. Feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, renowned for her critiques of patriarchy and violence, captured this spirit when she performed Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl,” which condemns post-war capitalist alienation with visceral, ecstatic language. Ginsberg’s imagery – robot apartments, blind capitals, and monstrous bombs – captured the dehumanising machinery of the system that queer radicals wanted to dismantle. See: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl
- By the first years of the twenty-first century, critical voices had begun to challenge this trajectory. Writers such as Sarah Schulman revealed that LGBT+ rights were increasingly being used to mask oppressive state policies, particularly in contexts such as Israel, where progressive attitudes towards homosexuality were employed to justify military aggression and occupation – a tactic later termed pinkwashing. Similarly, Jasbir Puar introduced the concept of homonationalism to describe how Western states use queer rights as a benchmark to shame or discipline other nations and cultures deemed as “backward,” despite their own societies remaining deeply unequal.
