The high price of cheap rhetoric

Why freedom is never safe when love is suspect – LGBTQ+ rights under pressure in Slovakia

In Slovakia, Prime Minister Robert Fico and his coalition want to try to rewrite the constitution. Under the guise of protecting “national identity,” they want to establish dual gender rights and require schools to discuss topics like gay marriage with parental consent. Not because the EU is imposing anything, but because fears and doomsday scenarios are easier fuel than the truth.

It affects me and makes me lose some motivation. Time and again, minorities are used as a lightning rod. LGBTQ+ people are portrayed as a threat to the nation, when in reality, they’re simply asking for the same thing as everyone else: a free, safe, and dignified life.

“National identity” sounds stark, as if it were a monument to be protected. In reality, it’s a mirage: the closer you get to it, the faster it dissolves into fear and nostalgia for a past that never existed. There’s no fixed identity that’s threatened by the fact that intersex people exist. Their existence is a medical reality, not an ideological hobby.

But fear sells. “Stick to what’s familiar” sounds easier than daring to choose the future. You only have to shout that the EU is going to take something away from “us,” and suddenly love becomes a threat.

Politics should be about the distribution of scarcity. But love is not a scarce commodity. There is no limit to worth, no maximum to happiness. Whoever scapegoats love today could just as easily victimize science, art, or democratic freedoms tomorrow.

The point is this: if a government can decide that the love of some people doesn’t fit with its national identity, then sooner or later it can also exclude your freedom. The freedom of “someone else” is always about your freedom.

I hope we can stop treating love as the enemy and finally see it for what it was meant to be: as the most abundant resource we have.