Polish gays,
joined by LGBT activists from around the world, held a
successful "Equality Parade" Saturday, facing little
resistance as they marched through downtown Warsaw.
Permits for the gay-pride parade were denied the past
two years, and although marchers walked anyway last
year, this year's officially sanctioned event, monitored by
scores of police, was a clear triumph, the
Associated Press reports.
"It is the first time in this part of Europe
that we have had such a happy parade," Volker Beck, an
openly gay German politician who was among those
attacked at Moscow's thwarted gay-pride march two weeks
ago, told the crowd at the end of the parade, according
to the AP. Some 3,000 people participated in the
event, led by a truck carrying a banner that said
"Homophobia Kills."
Although a counter-rally had been planned
by a right-wing youth group linked to a political
party in Poland's governing coalition, it was called
off at the last minute, apparently out of concern for public
order, the AP reports. Many of the predominantly Catholic
country's political leaders, including president Lech
Kaczynski, the former Warsaw mayor who refused to
allow the parade in 2004 and 2005, are openly critical
of homosexuality, regarding it as a perversion and a threat
to civilization.
Equality Parade participants wanted to show
otherwise. "We do not agree to being pushed into a
ghetto," Ania Kurowicka, a 21-year-old Warsaw
University student, told the AP. "We do not want to be
publicly called deviants, sick people, or criminals."
(The Advocate)
