I wrote an Open Letter to Aigars Kalvitis in Swedish. It was published by QX.se. It was appreciated and I received numerous requests for a translation to English and spread it to the world. (Click on the "About" banner to the left to know more about Oscar Swartz).
OK, shoot! Here it is:
Open letter to the Prime Minister of Latvia
“I, as a head of the government, cannot accept that a parade of sexual minorities takes place in the middle of our capital city next to the Dom Cathedral. This is not acceptable. Latvia is a state based on Christian values."
With these words did you, Aigars Kalvitis, prime minister of Latvia, demand that the City Council of Riga prohibit the first Gay Pride parade in your nation's history. They obeyed you.
But Dear Aigars Kalvitis, are you so blind that you cannot see what is going on there, around the Riga Dom in Old Riga, right in the middle of the capital in the country with those Christian values?
I will give you a glimpse of my impressions from a weekend in Riga recently:
On the Riga Sealine ferry, which is partially owned by Riga City Council, you get the first glimpses of the wild partying that dominates Old Riga: Lit up advertising boxes with lightly clad women that pose for establishments with names such as "Foxy Lounge". In the free magazine Riga This Week you find page after page with escorts and striptease, relax rooms and sauna and private dancing and "lesby show, apartments, erotic massage". And hordes of Latvian and "ex-pat" youth drift around between "normal" pubs and bars, music establishments and cafés, open until 6 in the morning. Oh, I failed to mention the gambling that goes on in the city's casinos.
Frankly speaking: There is non-stop boozing and screwing going on in the quarters around the Riga Dom.
Your statement came after two weeks of hateful campaigning by the big churches and nationalist organisations and rightist parliamentarians. The aggression that met the brave little group that finally participated in Latvia's first Gay pride Parade was frightening. Participants were shocked by the bottomless hatred they were facing.
I enclose an ad from Riga This Week for an establishment a couple of blocks from the Dome. As you can see it is indeed situated in the house beside the Evangelical Lutheran S:t Peter's Church, whose spokesmen you listened so eagerly to when they claimed that it would be unacceptable for some gay men and women to pass their church. Right beside the church there were lads shouting "Free blowjobs!" to passing male tourists, passing them a free beer ticket and firmly leading them into an "exciting show". Your double standard is obvious and your talk about concern for the churches is not credible.
Riga was a positive experience with impressively well-tended parks, fantastic jugend architecture that is restored to its former glory and marvellous beaches down in Jurmala. Impressively innovative, upscale and gargantuan fast-food emporium Lido was a singular experience. And Riga has a bustling night-life of all kinds, including a couple of gay places.
I am personally in favour of market economy, entrepreneurship and free enterprise - including the kind that flourishes around the churches in Old Riga. Latvia boasts the highest economic growth in all of EU, 8,5 % in 2004. Congratulations! It is reasonably easy however to achieve high growth when labour costs are a fraction of your neighbours'.
But what are you going to do when differences in labour costs are not as pronounced anymore? I suggest that you ask Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, the top business school that is financed to a large extent by the Swedish state and managed by Stockholm School of Economics, a school I myself graduated from and have been teaching at.
I am sure they know about Richard Florida, a world famous American professor of regional economics who has studied why certain cities achieve high growth while others stagnate. His answer in books like "The Rise of the Creative Class" is: growth cities manage to keep and attract creative people since they have high "creative capital". One of his most important measuring sticks is what he calls a city's "Gay Index" or "Bohemian Index". Cities with lively gay communities turn out to be cities with high innovation, high growth and good prospects for the future.
Why? Because cities with tolerance for diversity, which makes gays feel at home, also happen to be the same environment that attracts creative and talented people of all kinds. Florida has summarized his findings as the "Three Ts of Development": Technology, Talent and Tolerance.
Luckily enough, Latvia's court system showed that democratic rights, guaranteed by law, are above the prejudice and hatred against minorities and outsiders that you as a politician expressed. The parade took place under exemplary police protection. But that does not suffice to build creative capital, something Riga will need in the future.
Oscar Swartz,
Swedish internet entrepreneur, economist and writer - educated at Stockholm School of Economics and Columbia University in New York
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