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In some places, love is celebrated with flowers and dinners.
In others, it is punished, silenced, or banned.

This Valentine’s Day, love needs more than words. It needs protection.

Love is a human right, yet across Europe, LGBTIQ+ people are being attacked for loving openly. By supporting Forbidden Colours, you help defend dignity, freedom, and equality.

Give your Valentine a gift with meaning.
Give them the fight for love.

Discover what Forbidden Colours achieved

Recognised by Love, Rejected by the State

They are married, they are in love, and they want a normal life together.
Yet in Slovakia, their family is still denied. Even after a court ruled that the Argentine husband should receive permanent residence, the authorities refuse to act. His visa expires every three months. Every goodbye carries fear. He cannot freely visit his husband’s family, plan a future, or live without uncertainty. In 2026, this is what forbidden love looks like in Europe: a family recognised by the courts, but erased by the state.

 
 

Born Into Love, Denied By Bulgaria

Born into love, Baby Sara spent the first five years of her life without a nationality. Bulgaria refused to recognise her family and never granted her citizenship, even though one of her mothers is Bulgarian and the other British. Because Sara was born in Spain, she could not receive UK citizenship — leaving Bulgaria as the only possible path. When that door stayed shut, even after a court ruling by the European Court of Justice, her parents were forced to fight for her identity through Spanish systems, simply so their child could exist legally. This is what forbidden love looks like in Europe: a baby made stateless, not because she lacks parents, but because the state (and European Commission) refuses to see her family as real.

Married in Belgium but not recognized in Italy

Luciano & Olivier have been together for 22 years.
In 2019 Olivier proposed Luciano to get married.
After COVID they finally celebrated their love in May 2023.
 
Luciano being Italian, he had to produce a series of documents to prove that he wasn’t married before, that he is officially living in Belgium, that he never did something against the law, …
 
When he asked the Italian state to receive those documents, Luciano, had to identify the person with whom he was going to marry. He being a male and identifying as cisman, could only tick the ‘female’ box as his future partner in the automated system. Obviously no option for them to go that route! Hence the automated system had to officially bypassed by a legal paper document where the only option was to indicate that Luciano and his future husband were ‘officially living together’.
 
Luciano and Olivier are officially married in Belgium, a country that has always been at the forefront of equality.
Luciano and Olivier are officially not able to be married in Italy, and are not recognized as a married couple in a country that is a founding partner of the EU.

When Love Becomes Too Heavy to Carry

In Armenia, two young men in love felt so alone and unsafe that they chose to end their lives together — sharing photos of themselves and a final kiss before jumping from a bridge in Yerevan — because prejudice, rejection, and the absence of protection made their future feel impossible. Their deaths sparked hateful celebrations online and revealed a harsh truth: even when love is real, society’s intolerance can make it feel unbearable.

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