Serbian Orthodox Church clashes with authorities over gay propaganda

Serbian Patriarch Porfiriy called for the withdrawal of the biology textbook for the 8th grade, approved by the Serbian Ministry of Education. This is not the first public conflict between the Serbian Orthodox Church and official Belgrade, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

The Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) and a number of Serbian political parties have joined forces to challenge Serbia's recently revised school curriculum over its depiction of gender and sexual identity, and have launched an official review that could lead to the ban of a number of textbooks. At the initiative of the SPC, the National Council of Education will check textbooks in Serbian schools for LGBT propaganda.

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Serbian Patriarch Porfiry publicly called for the withdrawal of the biology textbook for the 8th grade, which talks about the differences between sex and gender, namely that “gender may not depend on the sex a person is assigned at birth, and only a person can determine their gender identity" Christians "cannot accept the imposition of new social norms that God did not preach", said the head of the SOC.

After this, representatives of the Doors party added seven more textbooks to the list of those that should be revised. These are five biology textbooks for the 8th grade, a history textbook for the 8th grade, a sociology textbook for the 4th grade, and a civics textbook for high school. All of them, according to party leader Boško Obradović, contain controversial LGBT content.

The National Council of Education of Serbia should make recommendations on the scientific validity of material in textbooks and whether the interests of the nation are served by presenting such ideas in schools. But when this will happen is unknown; for now, schoolchildren in Serbia are studying according to a new program that has little in common with the traditional values ​​of the Serbian people.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that the SOC has entered into an open conflict with the Serbian authorities on the LGBT issue. The Church opposed the holding of EuroPride 2022 in the capital of Serbia, and supported lithiums (processions of the cross) against this event in Belgrade. During the first two lithiums in August, the Patriarch was outside Belgrade, apparently deciding not to conflict with the President of Serbia. But the third time, on September 11, he could no longer help but notice that one hundred thousand believers had come to him and were standing under the windows of his residence.

At the liturgy on September 11, Patriarch Porfiry of Serbia delivered a sermon castigating the LGBT ideology being imposed on the Serbs. The next day, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that he did not approve of a single word spoken at this sermon. And on September 17, at the celebration dedicated to the graduation of military school cadets who became officers of the Serbian Army, there was neither the Patriarch nor any of the representatives of the SOC - although both the Mufti and the Catholic Archbishop were present.

In addition, it was on September 17, despite the formal ban on the final event of EuroPride 2022 - the gay pride parade in the center of Belgrade - This LGBT event was still held under police protection. True, there were few participants, and most of them were Western diplomats and journalists. Wherein The police did not allow opponents of the gay pride parade, the majority of SOC believers, to the event site.

A peculiar response to these actions of the authorities was the religious procession “For the Salvation of Serbia,” which took place on October 2 in the center of Belgrade. Its participants with banners and slogans “Holy Father Sava, pray to God for us!”, “Kosovo is Serbia!” walked through the city center from the building of the Patriarchate of the SOC to the Church of St. Mark.

_{Participants also carried a large censer with incense to, according to them, cleanse the city of the consequences of the gay pride parade, which took place in the same streets. It is noteworthy that near the monument to the last Emperor of Russia Nicholas II, where one of the priests read a prayer, there were people with flags not only of Serbia, but also of the Russian Empire and the DPR.}