Lilies, the Devil, and Rainbow Colors
Lilies, the Devil, and Rainbow Colors A Brief History of Our Sacred Symbols Vuk Bačanović Sarajevo’s first Pride march in which took place on 8 September 2019. Participants are marching under the slogan “Ponosno zajedno” (Proudly Together). Photo credit: Antonio Balic This year’s Sarajevo Pride produced exactly what contemporary politics increasingly specializes in: a symbolic scandal. A participant dressed as the Devil marched at the front of the parade, another wrapped Bosnia’s medieval lily emblem in rainbow symbolism, and within hours social media was flooded with warnings about sacrilege, national humiliation, and moral catastrophe. In a country that has survived war, ethnic cleansing, state capture, mass corruption, deindustrialization, and the systematic looting of public wealth, it was apparently a young man with a rainbow flag who finally crossed the red line. Let us set aside, for a moment, the fact that the struggle against discrimination based on whom people share the...