Pride marchers revel across Europe
ROME — Police in riot gear Saturday blocked streets to thwart gay pride marchers in Istanbul, while thousands turned out joyfully in Paris and elsewhere in Europe after pandemic privations — although setbacks against LGBTQ rights tempered some of the celebratory air.
Authorities have banned Istanbul Pride events since 2015, citing public security and more recently covid-19 pandemic restrictions. The Cumhuriyet newspaper said at least 25 people were detained.
Pandemic concerns forced cancellations of Pride events in Lisbon and postponement of London’s usually heavily attended event.
In Berlin, demonstrators set off on three routes toward central Alexanderplatz in a format meant to avoid bigger gatherings during the pandemic and to re- flect the diversity of the LGBTQ community.
In Italy, thousands of Pride celebrants rallied in Rome and in some smaller cities.
With a proposed law to combat hate crimes against LGBTQ people stalled in the Italian Senate for months, the Vatican and right-wing political leaders have been lobbying to eliminate some of the provisions, citing fears that the legislation will crimp freedom of expression.
After it became public that the Vatican earlier this month had raised objections with Italy’s embassy to the Holy See over some of the bill’s aspects, the Holy See tried to defuse anger by insisting that it doesn’t want to block passage. But its No. 2 official, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, expressed concern that the legislation could leave open to prosecution people expressing opinions about “any possible distinction between man and woman.”
Proponents of the law retort that the threshold for prosecution is inciting hatred or violence against the protected classes. If approved, the Italian law would also combat discrimination and hate crimes against women and people with disabilities.
A new Hungarian law prohibits sharing content on homosexuality or sex reassignment to people younger than 18 in school sex education programs, films or advertisements. The nation’s government says the law aims to protect children and insists that it doesn’t target gays. Critic says the law links homosexuality with pedophilia.
Camille Fois, 25, traveled to Paris from the Alpine city of Annency to take part in her first Pride march. Speaking about the Hungarian law, she expressed concerns shared by many rights advocates in the EU.
“It can happen to us very quickly. It’s not as far away as that,” she said.
The overarching mood among tens of thousands of participants at the Paris event
was of celebration after nearly a year-and-a half of pandemic-triggered restrictions on gatherings and socializing.
Singing along to “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry, people danced in one of the Metro trains that carried them to the rallying point. With half of French adults now having had at least one vaccine shot, many no longer felt the need for masks and partied with abandon.
“Being locked away was hard,” said Georges Gregoire, 33, who was there with his partner from Lille. “I wanted to have fun.” Gregoire, a nursing student, moved to France from Haiti, where, he said, he was so miserable and ostracized as a gay man that he contemplated suicide.
Salv, who didn’t want to give his full name because he doesn’t want it widely known that he is HIV-positive, marched with a placard that read: “40 years of waiting for a vaccine.” He said he is optimistic that research poured into coronavirus vaccines will boost prospects for a vaccine against HIV.
Many participants in Paris
expressed alarm about the rollback of rights in Hungary and Poland, two EU nations led by right-wing governments.
Last year, Poland’s president declared that the term LGBTQ didn’t mean people but an ideology more dangerous than communism, a reference to that nation’s several decades in the Soviet bloc.
In North Macedonia, hundreds of people marched through the capital, Skopje, as the Balkan country hosted its second-ever Pride parade. The crowd carried a large rainbow banner, blew whistles, and cheered and danced to music playing from a vehicle with loudspeakers.
The parade was held under the motto “Out of the walls!”
Last year, North Macedonia’s parliament adopted an anti-discrimination law, seen as the cornerstone of a decadelong struggle by civil society to ensure the protection of the country’s most vulnerable and marginalized communities.