Hundreds of people marched through the streets of Skopje and thousands more in Sarajevo during the annual Pride events on Saturday, June 24. In the two weeks before that, Pride marches took place in Zagreb, Prishtina, Athens and Sofia, while International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT) was celebrated in Tirana on May 17. And while only the Pride in Istanbul faced official government restrictions, these celebrations also came with similar demands in all Balkan capitals: stopping hate speech and hate crimes fueled by widespread homophobia and transphobia. In March 2023, the Institute of Sociological, Political and Juridical Research (ISPPI), which is part of Sts. Cyril and Methodious University in Skopje, revealed the results of the European Social Survey (ESS) pertaining to homophobia, xenophobia, and susceptibility to conspiracy theories. Starting in 2002 the survey has been held every two years in up to 35 European countries, and the latest round covered North Macedonia for the first time. Balkan countries marked in red: Responses to the question “If a close family member was a gay man or a lesbian, I would feel ashamed.” Source: European Social Survey Round 10 Data. Data file edition 3.0. Sikt – Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research, Norway – Data Archive and distributor of ESS data for ESS ERIC, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The results of the survey revealed that citizens of North Macedonia are among the most homophonic and most xenophobic in Europe, as well as declaring themselves among the most religious. They have strong authoritarian tendencies, distrust state institutions, and are disinterested in participation in democratic processes that would lead to social change. They are susceptible to conspiracy theories, doubt science, and blame their state for low quality of education, economy and politicians. Responses by the representative sample of 1429 respondents placed North Macedonia as outlier among the 24 countries covered by the survey conducted during 2022, but most other Balkan countries had similar results. For instance, while 61 percent of respondents from North Macedonia confirmed that they would “feel ashamed” “if a close member of their family is a gay man or lesbian,” a significant percentage of respondents in neighboring countries also agreed: 39 percent in Montenegro, 37 percent in Bulgaria, 30 percent in Croatia, and 29 percent in Serbia. The ESS results also indicated that only 24 percent of respondents in North Macedonia agreed that “Gay men and lesbians should be free to live their own life as they wish.” Other European countries where such tolerant people are in the minority include Montenegro (30 percent), Serbia (41 percent), Lithuania (41 percent), Bulgaria (48 percent) and Hungary (48 percent). “Skopje has no place for homophobes,” a banner at Skopje Pride 2023, June 24, 2023. Photo by Global Voices, CC-BY-3.0. In a statement for Radio MOF, the ESS national coordinator for North Macedonia, Professor Aneta Cekic, pointed at high levels of social conservativism in Macedonian society as the cause of this situation. Имаме исто така доста негативен став и кон абортусот, на пример, релативно негативен став кај некои категории испитаници и кон жените, меѓутоа факт е дека најекстремниот или најнегативниот став е насочен кон оваа (ЛГБТ) популација, можам да кажам и традиционално веќе. We've also detected very negative positions about abortion, for instance, and in some categories of respondents we found relatively negative positions towards women. However it is a fact that most extreme or most negative positions are against the LGBTQ+ population, which I may say has become traditional. North Macedonia ranked lowest in Europe in responses to whether it is good or bad for the economy “to allow people from other countries to live here.” These negative opinions on migrations, with 41 percent refusing to allow people of other race or ethnic group to live in their country, placed North Macedonia in a like-minded group with Hungary, Czechia, Greece and Slovakia. Cekic explained to Radio MOF that factors contributing to xenophobia and authoritarian tendencies include relatively high poverty, as well as “political instability, high level of conflict, corruption and problems in society.” In the Western Balkans, homophobia has been especially damaging as a weapon of geopolitical influence, as both domestic and foreign anti-democratic forces use it to recruit support among the conservative segments of population.