Gay News Watch | Story Topic

Pride Problems

Every year, Gay Pride celebrations rally LGBT communities and are challenged by some politicians and anti-gay conservatives.

RELATED CATEGORIES:	Bisexual Black Business Community Crime Entertainment Gossip Hispanic Legal-Civil Rights Lesbian Politics Religion Sex Transgender Weird Youth
RELATED PLACES:

These are the current stories from the topic you selected.

BLOG POSTS:

(8)

COMMENTS:

(120)

Click here to receive E-Mail Alerts whenever there's a new story or blog/view related to this story topic.

latest headlines

Numbers dwindle for Gay Pride march in south India

Times of India, Posted: 6/28/2010, 6:52 AM
The second edition of the 'Chennai Rainbow Pride March' — an event to celebrate alternative sexuality and gender identities — on Sunday saw fewer participants when compared to last year but activists in the southern India city formerly known as Madras said it was the people themselves who mattered. "We are seeing some families marching with us this year and a lot of new faces, so we are happy. Those who were here last year are playing a larger role and that is a good thing," said Aniruddhan Vasudevan, a Bharatanatyam artist and member of Shakti Center, a collective that aims to foster dialogue on gender and sexuality. "While transgenders have always been at the forefront of this movement, we have lesbian, gay and bisexual people attending the event as well. It takes a lot of courage for them to come out and make a statement," he said. The march was the culmination of a series of events to mark 'Pride Month', including a meeting of parents of LGBT persons at the Centre for Counselling, a two-day LGBT performance festival called 'Nirangal' and the Ms Sahodaran beauty pageant. Vasudevan said it was important for more events like the Pride March to be organised for the general public to be aware of LGBT rights.

BUZZ

3 shot, 1 dead at San Francisco Pride street party

San Francisco Chronicle, Posted: 6/27/2010, 9:25 PM
Thousands of revelers gathered in downtown San Francisco for the 40th annual gay pride parade on Sunday, one day after a related celebration turned deadly with a shooting at a street party. Stephen Powell, 19, was among three people shot late Saturday night during the city's "Pink Saturday" event that precedes the parade. Powell died early Sunday from gunshot wounds to the chest, authorities said. A 19-year-old woman and a 29-year-old man also were injured, each shot in the leg, but are expected to survive, said Officer Samson Chan, a police spokesman. The shooting took place at around 11:30 p.m. Saturday in the city's Castro district. Chan said huge crowds had gathered in the street for the normally peaceful party. When shots were fired, police descended on the scene as partygoers ran in all directions. Police arrested a 19-year-old man, whose identity has not been released, and recovered a handgun believed to be used in the shooting. Police were investigating what led to the shooting but Officer Phil Gordon told the San Francisco Chronicle authorities did not believe it was a hate crime. "We think they (the shooter and at least one victim) knew each other," he said. City leaders said based on the initial investigation they did not believe the violence would cause officials to cancel future gay pride events in the Castro.

BUZZ

AFA claims 10-year-old Pride marshal is child abuse

Dallas Voice, Posted: 6/24/2010, 12:55 PM
Will Phillips, 10, has been chosen as grand marshal of the Northwest Arkansas Gay Pride Parade in his hometown of Fayetteville. Phillips is the young man who made news last fall when he refused to stand in class to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, because the pledge promises “liberty and justice for all” and, as he says, it’s a lie because LGBT people aren’t given equal rights in this country. Well, leave it up to our old buddy Tim Wildmon over at the American Family Association to say something egregiously stupid and outrageous about Will being given this honor. Wildmon is the same one who earlier this week railed against Home Depot for sponsoring the Southern Maine Pride festival and planning a booth at the Pride festival that will offer workshops for kids. He said then that “Home Depot is basically encouraging the attendance of children at events which openly expose them to transvestites, cross-dressers, and homosexual activists.” Wildmon’s e-mail today about Will being grand marshal was headlined “AFA says using 10-year-old as gay pride parade grand marshal a form of child abuse.” The rest of the e-mail says: “This weekend, the Northwest Arkansas Gay Pride Parade will have a 10-year-old boy, Will Marshall, serving as Grand Marshal. The boy says of homosexuals that this ‘is the way they are born.’ ‘It’s shameful that adults would abuse a brain-washed child in this way,’ said AFA president Tim Wildmon. ‘He’s obviously just parroting the nonsense he’s been told by manipulative adults. For gay activists to trot out this child and make him the poster child for promoting unnatural sexual expression is a form of child abuse."

BUZZ

Sharon and Kelly Osborne face anti-gay protesters

Monsters & Critics (U.K.), Posted: 6/14/2010, 7:03 AM
Sharon Osbourne and daughter Kelly sat atop a float as grand marshals of the West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade on Sunday afternoon. The pair waved to more tan 400,000 people who lined the route through the streets to celebrate the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities in Los Angeles. But the parade was almost ruined as the Osbournes came face to face with angry anti-gay protesters halfway through the parade. According to reports, the anti-gay group came right up to Sharon and Kelly midway through the parade and started yelling at them. But Sharon, renowned for her tough personality as a judge on America’s Got Talent, stood her ground and told the protesters over a loudspeaker: 'You should be ashamed of yourselves.” A source told RadarOnline: “Kelly went to the mic and told the crowd: 'My God loves Gays'. She then led the mainly gay crowd into a chant of ‘God loves Gays’. It was so loud it drowned out the protesters.”

BUZZ

Madrid Gay Pride bans Israelis over Gaza flotilla raid

The Guardian (U.K.), Posted: 6/10/2010, 6:07 AM
A delegation of gay residents of Tel Aviv has been banned from joining a gay pride march in Madrid because authorities in the Israeli city have not condemned the recent attack on the Gaza flotilla. "After what has happened, and as human rights campaigners, it seemed barbaric to us to have them taking part," explained Antonio Poveda, of Spain's Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transexuals and Bisexuals. "We don't just defend out own little patch." The Tel Aviv group have reacted angrily to the decision, claiming that the Madrid activists were getting their priorities wrong by mixing the nine flotilla deaths with gay pride. "I cannot recall anyone asking the Tel Aviv city hall to either support or condemn in this case. That is not their job. I also don't recall Madrid's gay organisations condemning any of the Palestinian terrorist attacks on cafes or buses," Eytan Schwartz, a spokesman for the city told Spain's El Mundo newspaper. "Don't they know that Islamist fundamentalists don't just want to finish off Israel, but that they also believe homosexuals should 'cure themselves' or die?" "It is shameful that they should join with pro-Palestinian and fundamentalist groups which are not exactly tolerant with homosexuality," he said. "Why do they mix politics with a gay pride procession? We were invited as an apolitical association and we do not represent the government," Mike Hamel, one of the Israeli invitees, said. Schwartz said that Tel Aviv had also extended an invitation to Madrid to send a gay delegation to the city.

BUZZ

Skinheads attack Slovakia's first Gay Pride parade

Agence France Presse (AFP), Posted: 5/23/2010, 2:05 PM
WATCH: Several dozen skinheads attacked gay rights supporters Saturday, wounding at least two people and forcing the cancellation of parade through the centre of the Slovak capital, media reported. Around 1,000 people had gathered in the centre of Bratislava for the Rainbow Pride parade when some 80 skinheads began to hurl stones and smokebombs at the participants, despite a large police presence. Austrian Euro-MP Ulrike Lunacek was hit by a rock, but not injured, according the CTK news agency. Eight people were detained by police, which asked organisers to cancel the parade. The police "were clearly unprepared to face such a situation, despite our warnings," one of the organisers Roman Kollarik, told CTK. "A bunch of morons who use violence, thwarted our event. We are very sad and disappointed," said Rainbow Pride spokeswoman Romana Schlesingerova. Gay pride parades still face strong opposition in some eastern European countries.

BUZZ

Police, protesters clash at Lithuania's first gay march

Agence France Presse (AFP), Posted: 5/8/2010, 11:11 AM
Police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters in Lithuania's capital Vilnius on Saturday, as homosexual rights campaigners held their first-ever rally in the Baltic state. Officers moved in to disperse around 2,000 counter demonstrators at the end of the Baltic Pride 2010 march, as they hurled stones, bottles and fire-crackers from behind security barriers and shouted "Down with Homonazis". Nineteen protesters were arrested, police said. Gay rights campaigners had Friday won an appeal against a court decision to ban their parade in this overwhelming Catholic and former communist EU nation of 3.3 million people, where homosexuality is largely taboo. "We've made a decisive step towards greater tolerance," Vytautas Valentinavicius, one of the organisers, told AFP. Around 300 people took part in the march, with a heavy police presence protecting them from the protesters. "I feel like I've taken part in an historic event," said Ieva, a medical student, marching with her partner Monika. Participants marched under a huge rainbow banner -- a global symbol of gay rights -- and carried placards reading "Human Rights Are My Pride" and "Different Families, Same Love". Same-sex relations were decriminalised in Lithuania in 1993 -- two years after the country won independence from the crumbling Soviet Union, which had banned homosexuality.

BUZZ

Skinheads attack Bulgarian gay rights demonstration

Novinite (Bulgaria), Posted: 3/22/2010, 12:43 PM
Six men were arrested in Bulgaria after they assaulted physically a rally supporting gay rights. Six activists of the youth organization “Lesbians, Gay, Bi- and Transgender in Action” arrived in the city of Pazardzhik from Sofia in order to protest an order to local City Council banning the display of homosexuality in public. The activities arranged large banners on which they started writing articles from the Bulgarian Constitution and the UN Human Rights Charter. No local gay rights activists joined them, Darik Radio reported. However, about 100 local young men most of them with shaved heads and in black clothes staged an anti-rally claiming they had gathered to express their support for the order issued by the City Council. As several of skin heads members attacked the gay rights activists they were immediately knocked down to the ground and arrested by the policemen guarding the rally, who were led personally by the head of the Pazardzhik Police Directorate, Commissar Stoyan Stoyanov. No-one was hurt during the skirmish. However, the anti-rally protestors shouted offensive slogans directed against the gay rights activists such as “No one wants you, losers”, “Out of Pazardzhik”, “Go to Uganda, freaks”. The gay rights organization has attacked the order of the Pazardzhik Municipality before Bulgaria’s Commission for Protection from Discrimination, which is to come up with a ruling on Wednesday.

BUZZ

IKEA pays actors to be gay for Sydney Mardi Gras

The Scavenger, Posted: 2/23/2010, 8:27 PM
A half dozen actors were paid hundreds of dollars each to participate in the IKEA float during the 2008 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. The Eventing Edge, a Sydney-based events and marketing firm, was responsible for finding the performers, according to a leaked email from the company. “IKEA is once again supporting the Mardi Gras this year with a great winter wonderland inspired float and are looking for six actors to fill key talent roles in the Scandinavian hot tub,” said the email. Various requirements were listed, including “a sense of fun”, “ability to act like you have water in a hot tub when you don’t” and “ability to be adored Costume will be minimal – i.e. towel and Scandinavian blond wig – and shiny glittery stuff,” said the message, which invited actors to a casting call in Rushcutters Bay. Successful candidates received “remuneration” of $300 each for their “services”.

BUZZ

Moscow mayor set to ban 'satanic' Gay Pride parade

ABC News, Posted: 1/26/2010, 12:19 PM
Moscow's openly homophobic mayor has once again pledged to prevent his city from holding gay pride parades, calling homosexuality a "social plague." For several years, Moscow has experienced unprecedented pressure to conduct a gay pride parade, which cannot be called anything but a satanic act," Mayor Yury Luzhkov said Monday, according to the Interfax news agency. "We have prevented such a parade and we will not allow it in the future. Everyone needs to accept that as an axiom." Luzhkov compared "same-sex so-called love" to other "social plagues" like drug abuse and xenophobia, saying, "it is high time to crack down on them with all the power and justice of the law instead of talking about human rights. We need a social whip or something like that, not a liberal ginger cake," he added.

BUZZ

More>>

blog posts/viewpoints