The nameplate at the entrance didn’t go down too well, Lorelei Grigorita said with a laugh. With its plain white walls and barred windows, the building in Moldova’s capital, Chisinau, also offers a splash of color in thje sign with the bold pink lettering right above the entrance: Queer Cafe.
“After we put it up above the entrance, all the threats came,” Grigorita, the manager of the cafe, told DW. “But no,” Grigorita said. “That sign is not going anywhere. It’s the whole point of having a queer space in the city: It should be visible from the outside.”
In fact, the name Queer Cafe is somewhat misleading. The venue is neither exclusively for queer individuals, nor is it a coffeehouse serving coffee and cake. The name stands for what people associate with cafes: a meeting place where diverse individuals come together.
“We want to be a place where people can have fun,” said Grigorita, who studied journalism and communication. “If we’d called it a ‘queer community center,’ people might not have come because they’d think it was only for those in trouble.”
Located in the western part of Chisinau, the cafe has been one of the few welcoming places for members of LGBTQ+ communities in capital since it opened in July 2022.
Discrimination against LGBTQ+ communities remains a major issue in Moldova. In 2021, an 18-year-old recruit deserted the military after he was outed and bullied. At the time, even Moldovan President Maia Sandu expressed outrage.
Eighty percent of respondents to a 2024 study by Moldova’s Equality Council in collaboration with the United Nations said they did not want a queer person living in their neighborhood.
Choir, cinema, library
The Queer Cafe has a choir, movie nights, regular exhibitions and workshops, and a small library with books available to borrow.
Every now and then, the doorbell rings and new guests arrive at the cafe. The 27-year-old Grigorita greets them with a few words and quick hugs. The idea for the cafe was born during a queer film festival, and she has been involved ever since. At the time, Grigorita had just returned from Sweden, where she had lived and worked for a year. This period abroad helped give her the courage to publicly commit herself to working with LGBTQ+ communities. To pay her bills, she works in marketing alongside her full-time job as manager of the Queer Cafe.
In 1995, homosexuality was legalized in Moldova. However, society is slow to catch up and, in rural Moldova in particular, many people still keep their queer identities to themselves. “We are hardly visible outside of Chisinau,” Grigorita said.
Nevertheless, she said, there has also been considerable progress. “Even though the government has given us little public support in recent years, we activists have done our work and observed that tolerance is slowly increasing,” she said. “For example, there are more queer initiatives.”
Twelve years ago, Moldova was one of the European countries lagging behind in terms of queer equality, alongside Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia. The country has now reached the midfield, according to the 2025 Rainbow map, a global annual overview by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association.
Visibility vs. safety
Something shifted as the presidential elections approached in autumn 2024, Grigorita said. After the vote, Moldova’s government reported clear Russian influence efforts. The Kremlin’s narrative, which has been picked up by pro-Russia parties in Moldova, is that the European Union is a source of moral decay and a forced “rainbow ideology.”
Hate messages on social media became hate messages on real walls, too. The figures of two same-sex couples were stenciled on many walls in Chisinau accompanied by the text: “Do you think this is normal?”
In summer 2024, the Queer Cafe had just moved to a new location, and new threats came with its newfound public profile. “They tried to intimidate us and threatened to set fire to the building,” Grigorita said. “We used to feel the contempt in society, but that has meanwhile turned into open anger and violence. As we turned into a political issue, many people feel threatened by our existence.”
Shortly after the cafe’s opening, vandals damaged the door. Since then, guests have to ring the video intercom. It is a compromise between visibility and security.
2025 preelection tension
In September, voters in Moldova went to the polls to elect a new parliament. Preelection polls showed pro-Russia parties running neck and neck with the pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity.
Throughout the year, LGBTQ+ communities in Chisinau were already experiencing what happens when pro-Russia parties are in power. In May, the Chisinau City Council decided to ban all Pride events in the city. According to Chisinau’s mayor, Ion Ceban, this was to protect “traditional family values.”
Still, the Pride event went ahead as planned on June 15 and several thousand people demonstrated for a diverse Moldova. A counter protest took place at the same time, the “March for the Family”, organized by the right-wing conservative, pro-Russian Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM). Participants of the counter march tried to break through the police barriers and attack the Pride march.
On the evening of the parliamentary elections, the Queer Cafe hosted an election party as Grigorita assumed that no one would want to be alone that day. When it became clear that the pro-European PAS was winning, celebrations broke out at the Queer Cafe. “We were so relieved,” recalls Grigorita.
Leo Zbanca from Genderdoc-M, the oldest Moldavian NGO that advocates for the rights of queer people, echoes this sentiment. “Many people felt unsafe before the election and were even prepared to leave the country,” Zbanca said. “Now that the pro-European path is maintained, we can finally breathe and plan our lives.”
Zbanca has called on the government to push for legal recognition of gender identities and same-sex marriages in the new legislative period.
Grigorita said that would be real progress — but the issues go far beyond legal status. She is tired of political justifications for homophobia. Queer identity does not have to be a political issue, Grigorita said. Once the wooden double doors close behind visitors to the Queer Cafe, she said, the guests are free to just be who they are.
This article was originally published in German.
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