Thousands Of People In Romania Held A Massive Pride March To Demand Protection For LGBT People
Around 8,000 people in Romania showed their support for the LGBTQ community on Saturday Aug. 14, as they joined the annual Bucharest Pride Parade.
Around 8,000 people in Romania showed their support for the LGBTQ community on Saturday Aug. 14, as they joined the annual Bucharest Pride Parade.
Participants waved flags, blew whistles, danced during the march, which has been celebrated since 2004 and was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year’s Pride Parade in the capital marked 20 years since the country repealed a law that criminalized homosexuality.
Although the law, Article 200, was annulled in 2001, the country still bans same-sex marriage and civil partnerships.
Teodora Ion-Rotaru, the executive director of ACCEPT Association, an LGBT rights group, told AP that the Bucharest Pride “remains a protest that asks for the very basics.”
“The march asks for protection from violence, protection from discrimination, protection from being fired for your sexual orientation or gender identity,” she said.
Just a few hours before the pride parade was set to begin, about 100 far-right supporters held an anti-LGBT counter-march in the capital to advocate for traditional family values.
According to Reuters, lawmakers from two different parties, the junior ruling coalition ethnic Hungarian party UDMR and the opposition ultra-nationalist Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), have also stated that they plan on introducing legislation in September, when parliament is scheduled to reconvene, that will ban “gay propaganda” in schools.
A 2019 opinion poll by Eurobarometer found that 38% of Romanians agreed that gay, lesbian and bisexual people should have the same rights as heterosexuals, while a majority of 54% Romanians disagreed.
