“Nina Nana, Pllum i Bardhë” – Who Decides Whom We Love?

Personally, I first learned about the existence of the LGBTQ+ community through films, where it could be portrayed so beautifully that you could hardly perceive it as anything outside the ordinary. Yet, beyond the television screen, everything associated with it was demonized.

My first disillusionment with religion came when I learned that God had created the people of Lot, only to later destroy them. The very one who created you would forgive you, but only if you were willing to deny yourself. It seemed deeply unfair to me that those who were supposedly meant to love you unconditionally family, society, and God, would only be there for you if you made yourself smaller to fit the image they had created of you. This was one of the reasons I parted ways with religion, then with parts of the community I grew up in, and eventually, even with my first love.

Throughout this journey, I learned that being an ally does not mean sitting silently in a corner while the people closest to you, through their persistent carelessness, continue to undermine an entire community.

How far does solidarity go when you find yourself torn apart, knowing that those causing harm are not strangers preaching hatred, but your very own people? Collective ignorance survives when you laugh off a friend's remark over coffee, a comment from your boss at work, or your father's words at home. Or perhaps speaking up comes at a greater cost, because something beneath your feet begins to shift, and labels you never asked for start sticking to you. After all, what easier way is there to avoid a discussion than to reduce someone's values to being "sensitive," "feminist," or even "lesbian"?

It was unsettling enough for me to experience this. Imagine how unsettling it must be for the girl who actually belongs to the community. What was, for me, a confrontation over values could determine someone else's freedom to exist openly, to love, or to feel safe among the people closest to them.

How can the desire for equality sabotage your relationships with the people you love? For me, it cost a romantic relationship. It was easy to lose myself between the need to feel that I belonged with someone and the need to remain true to myself. Because society does not reproduce oppression through institutions alone; it also knows how to reproduce it through family, love, and religion.

That being said, I consider solidarity an act of courage. Because when there is no room for discussion within a relationship or social dynamic, the safety of our friends and loved ones can be compromised by the very opinions that, at first glance, do not seem particularly dangerous. But these opinions do not exist in isolation. They are part of a cultural narrative that feeds and sustains cultural hegemony, privileging some while oppressing others.

When heterosexuality is accepted without question, while someone else's love is contested, silence does not serve both sides equally. Neutrality leaves unchallenged what society has already normalized.

And that is precisely why those of us who have the privilege of avoiding this discussion must choose to take a stand.

So that someday, somewhere, in a free Kosovo, a little girl might hear the lullaby:

"Nina nana, pllum i bardhë, marrsh nuse me yll n'ballë"[1]

without anyone having already decided whom she is allowed to love.

Aulona Peci