MADRID, Spain—Dozens of men and a few women in stiletto heels raced through the center of the Spanish capital on Thursday, defying gravity, the heat and attempts by the far-right party Vox to curtail their Gay Pride celebrations this year.
The race in Chueca, a gay-friendly neighborhood in central Madrid, draws competitors from abroad and is one of the most eagerly awaited parts of the annual festival of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
The race attracts the young and old, the athletic and the portly. Reaching the finish line is no easy task: rules state that heels must be at least 10 cm (4 inches) high, and the shoes are measured before the race.
Madrid Pride, one of the world’s largest LGBT celebrations, will culminate in a parade in the city center on Saturday.
The ultra-conservative Vox, a political newcomer that won about 10 percent of the vote in April's national election and recently enabled the center-right to take over the Madrid city hall, has increasingly attacked the festival and LGBT rights in Spain.
Vox wants to move the Pride Parade from the city center to a park in the suburbs.
Vox's Madrid regional branch head, Rocio Monasterio, told La Contra TV on Tuesday the celebrations "denigrate people's dignity."
"When a mother, a father step outside there is no reason for them to stumble into this spectacle... involving explicit sexual acts in the street at daytime."
During the high heels run, there were chants against Vox.
Javier Garcia, a 23-year-old nurse, wants the race to stay in Madrid's center to keep it visible.
"People still have to fight and make visible certain inequalities that are still not fully resolved," he said before taking part in the race.
Garcia said he felt nervous because it was his first time running in Madrid's event, although he had participated in a similar one in the Canary Islands.
The race winner gets 350 euros ($390).
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK - Millions lined the streets of New York on Sunday to wave rainbow flags, celebrate the movement toward LGBTQ equality and renew calls for action in what organizers billed as the largest gay pride celebration in history.
Some 150,000 parade marchers and an estimated 4 million spectators commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that triggered the modern LGBTQ movement, with corporate sponsorship and police protection that would have been unthinkable half a century ago.
Similar parades were being held around the world, with celebratory events in liberal democracies and growing fights for equality in other places.
North Macedonia held its first gay pride march on Saturday. In Singapore, marchers called for scrapping a law banning gay sex. In Turkey, members of Istanbul's gay and transgender community gathered for a small rally that ended with tear gas and rubber bullets on Sunday after their annual march was banned for the fifth consecutive year.
"It's hard for us today, but can you even imagine what some of these people went through in the past? There's no way to thank them," said Josh Greenblatt, 25, an actor wearing red sunglasses, a white crop top, ripped jeans and gold-heeled boots at the New York event.
Greenblatt said he found his outlandish outfit "empowering," and he had plenty of competition from revelers stripping down to the barest of essentials and celebrating New York's legalization of toplessness for women.
One woman wore a skintight rainbow dress with a rainbow afro about 2 feet (60 cm) high. A shirtless man sporting rainbow-colored wings and high white platform shoes strutted up Broadway. Rainbow onesie leotards were popular, and there were plenty of colorful wigs, patent leather, fishnets and bright makeup.
The festivities were set to conclude on Sunday night with closing ceremonies at Times Square and a waterfront concert by Madonna.
ANTI-CORPORATE DISSIDENTS
The world's marquee gay pride parade was preceded on Sunday by a protest march by thousands of anti-corporate dissidents who rejected a uniformed police presence and commercial sponsorship, while demanding LGBTQ equality.
The Queer Liberation March aimed to call attention to the killing of black trans women, protest U.S. detentions of migrant children and oppose actions by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration to curtail the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other queer people.
In San Francisco, companies such as Alphabet Inc's Google, Facebook Inc, T-Mobile and Netflix Inc lent the parade a corporate flavor. Dissidents opposing corporate sponsorship blocked an intersection of the parade route, shouting: "Stonewall was a riot."
"The system of policing upholds white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, gender binaries and capitalist rule," one San Francisco protester said over a megaphone.
Some during the events also paused to consider the state of LGBTQ rights under Trump, who has banned transgender people in the military, cut HIV/AIDS research and supported so-called religious freedom initiatives to curb LGBTQ protections.
The White House says Trump has long advocated LGBTQ equality and noted that he backed a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality.
"They could turn back gay marriage. Don't ever fool yourself," said Christopher Edward Andrew, 53. "Elections matter. Votes matter." The U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in a landmark ruling in 2015.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, police raided New York's Stonewall Inn, ostensibly to shut down a Mafia-owned establishment selling watered-down liquor without a license. But the raid followed a series of others at gay bars in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, and the patrons fought back, forcing police to barricade themselves inside.
That touched off several nights of riots and the birth of a movement.
New York was designated the site of World Pride this year, drawing an estimated 4 million people to the city, where straight allies joined LGBTQ people in defending civil rights.
Mary Glasspool, assistant bishop of the New York Diocese of the U.S. Episcopal Church, said all its churches in Manhattan opened their doors for visitors from across the world.
"We want to show them this is a safe space and God loves everyone," Glasspool said. "Today, it is about love."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
NEW YORK -- Tens of thousands of people waving rainbow flags and hoisting political banners marched and danced on the streets of New York on Sunday in the latest festive edition of the Gay Pride parade that began in Central Park in 1970.
On foot, on roller skates, on motorbikes or riding on some 100 spectacularly colorful floats, participants moved slowly on a hot, sunny day along the two-mile (three-kilometer) parade route from historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, over to Fifth Avenue, then up to 29th Street.
The route was altered this year in anticipation of the celebrations planned for next year to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots between gay nightclub patrons and police that, in 1969, gave birth to the US movement for gay rights.
Many of Sunday's marchers were scantily dressed, like one clad only in a bikini with a rainbow-colored bottom and a pink top.
Another tanned and well-toned man on roller skates wearing a skimpy red trikini that amply displayed his sculpted abdominal muscles somehow managed to catch photographers' attention. He carried a sign that simply said "Love."
The theme of this year's parade was "Defiantly Different," a message inspired in reaction to President Donald Trump's treatment of the LGBTQ community, organizers said.
For the second straight year, many marchers carried anti-Trump banners and signs, criticizing policies seen as anti-gay.
For flamboyant Democratic New York Council member Corey Johnson, who at 36 is openly gay and is the city's first legislative leader with HIV, the slogan reflects New York's diversity: It has the nation's largest LGBTQ community, a population more than 40 percent foreign-born and where "more than 200 languages are spoken" just in the borough of Queens.
"As Lady Gaga says, 'I was born this way,'" he told the local ABC subsidiary, before returning to the parade, dancing and jumping with a rainbow banner streaming from his hand.
In a heavily Democratic city where gay voters matter, Johnson was not the only politician taking part: Also marching were Mayor Bill de Blasio, US Senator Chuck Schumer and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who walked behind a big banner reading "New York State of Love."
The parade's grand marshal this year was tennis legend Billie Jean King, 74, a lesbian and an outspoken defender of gender equality and LGBTQ rights, who rode in a carriage under a big, rainbow-colored parasol.
The atmosphere in this year's parade was much lighter than last year, when many marchers paid somber tribute to the 49 people killed in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
source: news.abs-cbn.com
KUALA LUMPUR - Marching through the streets of East Timor's capital Dili with a rainbow flag in his hand, Natalino Guterres was overwhelmed with emotion, reminding him of how he felt 15 years ago when he saw the Timorese flag raised for the first time.
"It was an emotional moment," he said of the pride parade.
"The sense of euphoria ... I saw happiness written on people's faces and some teared up. It reminds me of Independence Day in 2002."
Guterres was among some 500 people taking part in East Timor's first-ever pride parade. The atmosphere was carnival-like, with participants waving colourful rainbow flags, cheering and beating drums in the capital.
Campaigners say the parade last month was a milestone for the tiny, half-island nation - Asia's youngest democracy - and a beacon of hope for a region where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights are under increasing attack.
LGBT rights in the nation of 1.2 million people have not been a major focus. International headlines about the country have been dominated by its 24-year resistance to occupation by neighboring Indonesia, which eventually led to East Timor's independence in 2002.
However activists say social stigma and discrimination are common for LGBT people.
Same-sex behavior is not criminalized under East Timor's laws but they also do not offer protection against discrimination.
KICKED OUT OF HOME, BULLIED AT SCHOOL
Guterres, a development consultant who runs a youth group that organized the parade, said many like him grew up feeling "lonely" and do not know where to turn when they suffer discrimination.
"If you talk to the (LGBT) community, people have been kicked out of home or feel uncomfortable about going to school because they are bullied. They live from house to house because they are not accepted at home.
"That is why visibility of the LGBT community is important. We want to empower people who are still struggling," the 27-year-old told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Dili.
Prime Minister Rui Maria de Araujo gave a boost to LGBT rights supporters when he recorded a video message ahead of the march urging Timorese to create an inclusive nation, and accept people with different sexual orientations and gender identities.
The call was a "welcome glint of leadership amidst officials elsewhere in the region who openly stoke anti-LGBT bigotry", said Kyle Knight, a LGBT rights researcher with New York-based Human Rights Watch.
Although Taiwan's top court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in May, paving the way for the island to become the first place in Asia to legalize gay unions, progress of LGBT rights elsewhere in the region has been slow.
In neighboring Indonesia, the LGBT community has faced a series of attacks since last year with senior officials saying there is "no room" for gay rights movement, while authorities detained 141 men in a gay club raid in May.
In the same month too, two young Indonesian men were publicly flogged for gay sex in the ultra-conservative Aceh province which has Islamic laws.
In Malaysia, health authorities prompted a public uproar last month over a video contest on how to "prevent" homosexuality, and were forced to amend the competition.
But Knight said East Timor could still offer more to the LGBT community by enacting laws to outlaw discrimination based on sexual identity.
"Timor Leste's current legal environment presents a mix of silence, protection and gaps for LGBT people," Knight said, using another name for the Southeast Asian country.
LONG WAY TO EQUALITY
The parade - which was supported by international groups including UN agencies and diplomats - has nevertheless raised hopes among the LGBT community in East Timor, and provided an impetus for the public to debate the topic.
"LGBT issues have been swept under the carpet all this while, now it is time to talk about them," said Felix Maia, the spokesman of UN Women in East Timor, who was at the parade.
"It creates polarizing opinion but we can only start raising awareness when people start talking about it," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Guterres said there is a long way to go to achieve equality but he was optimistic, as he has seen how his family attitude has changed over the years.
His brother, who stopped talking to him for two years after Guterres came out to him as gay, showed up at the pride parade clad in a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "You are not alone" and appeared on stage with him.
"He hugged me on stage and told me he was very proud of me," he said. "We were both in tears."
source: news.abs-cbn.com
