Both Serbian and Kosovar men are macho men in a metrosexual packages. There's just not that much work for the Queer Eye guys here. Young men already dress carefully in the most stylish duds and haircut they can afford. People in Pristina and Belgrade dress far better than in Washington (faint praise, I know). Male friends put their arms around each other in ways rarely seen outside the gay ghettos of the USA.

Balkan men nonetheless remain very traditional. Indeed, it the absolute taboo on homosexuality rather than comfort with it than makes such things possible. Shortly before my departure for the Balkans, a gay Kosovar received political asylum in the United States due to persecution in his homeland:

"My story starts from my family," Prestreshi says. "They [found] out I'm gay from my aunt, because I needed to talk to somebody and I trusted her. So then she told them, and they started [to] beat me. I had to leave home."

He then stayed at apartments in Kosovo that are maintained secretly by gay organizations. But things went from bad to worse when Prestreshi and his gay friend, Lorik, went out to celebrate New Year's Eve in 2005.

"We went [out] and [Lorik] was an [effeminate] guy, and you can't be different in my country," he says. "We [were] beaten [by] two guys. They broke my nose, they cut my neck with a knife and ... they paralyzed [my friend's] hand."

Prestreshi and Lorik called the police to report the attack. He later learned that the incident was the first time someone had called the police in Kosovo to report a hate crime based on sexual orientation.

"The police started joking with us, calling in my language words like 'faggot,'" says Prestreshi. "Then they sent us [to a] hospital, where the doctor ignored us and said to us, 'You are sick people, I don't need HIV in my clinic.'"

After that attack, Prestreshi and Lorik talked to the press in Kosovo, and their story was published.

"They took a very, very courageous step in making it known publicly and speaking to the press," says Pilcher, "Unfortunately, that even caused more negative attention for him."

Prestreshi was brutally beaten again. And Lorik felt like he could not go on, Prestreshi says.

"He killed himself," he says, "with pills and alcohol together. Because he couldn't push his life to live closed, and you know, you can't imagine [what it's like] to be in one room, and [not be able to] go outside."

It’s a long way from the debate over civil unions and gay marriage in the U.S. And not unique in Eastern Europe—the BBC recently reported on how gay rights activists were beat up right outside the Kremlin.