Authors

Discussion

When Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, Soviet censorship was officially abolished, and the public sphere was suddenly flooded with previously banned sexual content (texts, images, and events). Yet despite all the pressing struggles for the new state, such content was quickly framed by state institutions as a matter of concern, perceived as requiring supervision and moral regulation.

Queer expressions, however, were treated differently from heterosexual ones, often subjected to multiple standards. Until 1993, Article 122 of the Criminal Code still criminalized sexual relations between men. Even after its repeal, institutional practice and public discourse continued to equate queer visibility with danger, immorality, or deviance.

This article examines two symbolic cases to show how queer visibility was regulated in Lithuanian public culture during the first post-Soviet decade. Drawing on press materials, archival records, and regulatory documents, this article argues that homosexuality was controlled through two contradictory logics: silence and scandalization.

The first case concerns the journal Naglis (1993–1997), the first Lithuanian magazine for gay men. Despite its small circulation, it became the target of constant attempts at restriction, censorship, and control. These interventions were rarely based on legal clarity but instead on a recurring assumption: homosexuality had to be treated as a threat to the state and public morality. In effect, Naglis was delegitimized and suppressed under the pretext of protecting society.

The second case concerns newspaper Vakaro žinios and its 2000 tabloid series “They Call Them Gays” in which suspected gay men were publicly “outed” without their consent. Here, homosexuality was not erased but spectacularized: visibility became a weapon. Public disclosure was used to stigmatize, sensationalize, and turn queer subjects into scandalous others, rather than fostering recognition.

Placing Lithuania within Baltic and Eastern European trajectories, the paper argues that queer visibility after 1990 was never simply “absent” or “present.” Instead, it was constantly negotiated through uneven and contradictory strategies of (in)visibility. These multiple standards reveal how post-Soviet public culture simultaneously opened and closed space for queer life—tolerating it as silence, demonizing it as spectacle, and rarely allowing it as a legitimate presence.