Don't post unless you read all of this.
Ever since my country became independent, the trend in choosing governments was mostly based on waiting for the current government to make mistakes and choosing the opposition the next time regardless of your political opinion. This is, essentially, why the current government is in power, because of massive failures the previous ones committed. However, in the last year or so, I've noticed that things have been getting more polarized than ever in Croatian politics. People are taking sides. Unfortunately, it used to be the people vs. the government. Now it's the supporters of the government vs. the supporters of the opposition. Which does indeed sound like the more democratic option, but yeah, it's kind of scary how conflicting the opinions of one person are compared to the opinions of another.
The reason this polarization has been happening is because, well, the ruling coalition (made up of 4 parties, of which SDP, the social democratic party, is often taken to be the ruling party of Croatia at the moment) decided to do what it essentially promised during the campaign; that it would introduce civil unions (and later gay adoptions, probably by the end of the mandate, right now we've only got step parent adoption for gays) and health education in schools.
The real "issue" here is health education. It has 4 modules, of which one is sexual education. Among other things, it promotes tolerance of people of any sexual orientation and gender identity and teaches that any sexual orientation or gender identity is perfectly natural. It also teaches that masturbation is a perfectly normal and healthy thing, as well as watching pornography. In addition, it encourages the usage of condoms and other contraceptive measures but doesn't promote abstinence because it's based on the assumption that humans are sexual beings that have no reason to not have sex.
The opposition (the right wing party) and the Church (which holds a lot of influence given the fact 84% of the country say they're Catholic) are in complete disagreement with the sex ed module and want it removed. This has essentially split Croatia in 2 politically; between the tolerant and the intolerant. Furthermore, the opposition invited Judith Reisman to hold a speech in the Parliament, which will indeed happen.
The problem is, this woman thinks homosexuals caused the second world war. She's under the impression that Hitler and everyone around him were homosexuals. She also believes that sex ed, homosexual propaganda and homosexual recruitment (apparently, we gays are preparing an invasion on something) is going to cause the current 1-2 percent that is the population of gays (it's actually more like 10% if you count in bisexuality) to rise to 30%. She also thinks pornography causes the excretion of a non-existent chemical called eritotoxin (that she made up) that destroys the structure of the brain. Actual scientists call her a pseudoscientist because none of her works were ever published in any peer-reviews magazines.
She held a lecture at a uni yesterday. I attended it. After the lecture (which was hideous, full of lies about Alfred Kinsey), she took questions. One of the students asked her about all of her controversial opinions and Reisman refused to answer. Another told her she watches pornography daily and isn't promiscious and asked her how she would explain that. The question was as simple as that. Reisman replied by saying that she doesn't know the details of the student's sexual life, but that she does know indoctrination when she sees it. She told the student that she had been raised in a communist environment (I hadn't noticed we were still in Yugoslavia, personally, or that we were so recently that students could have been raised in a communist environment) and that there's no help for her.
At this point, the dean stopped Reisman and told her that she was wrong to come to a country completely uneducated about it with prejudiced opinions, assuming it's a third world communist shit hole. This whole deal has become a huge issue in Croatia and it's still ongoing seeing as Reisman is still here. She's still supposed to hold a speech in the Parliament which is supposed to criticize sex ed using all those hateful arguments about homosexuals for example. The ruling socialist party, SDP, can technically not allow her to hold a speech, but some argue it would be called out for being undemocratic by a lot of people so they probably wont do it.
Currently, on this issue, the country is divided in 3. Those that want her lectures banned and her forbidden from holding a speech in the Parliament based on the argument that it's hate speech (no, we don't have endless freedom of speech here in Croatia and we do ban hate speech, same as all of Europe), those that want to allow her speech and lectures but don't agree with her and those that agree with her. It just seems to me like in this 1 year that the left-wing coalition has been in power, the country has been splitting up politically in opinions for the first time. It's scary.
Personally, I'm extremely pleased with the government. The president, the prime minister, 15/17 ministers and the majority of the Parliament are atheists (in an 84% Catholic country). They're preaching tolerance and increasing minority rights. They've virtually removed all signs of corruption, they've prepared the country for the accession to the EU, and they've been introducing strict policies that are supposed to overturn the crisis fully and cause GDP growth next year. They've done all of that in 1 year, after the mess the right-wing party left the country in. They're also mostly socialist which fits my world view.
So yeah, sorry for the huge wall, but there isn't really any way to shorten this down. I'm simply fishing for some international opinions, 'cause, frankly, I'm rather sick of the usual rhetoric that goes on here. Thanks for bothering to read this huge wall. Those of you that get this far at least.