by Rex Wockner - SGN Contributing Writer

First Europride in Eastern Europe
Europride, which has roamed from country to country since 1992, was staged in Eastern Europe for the first time this year, culminating with the July 17 parade through the streets of Warsaw.

Around 8,000 people took part in the march despite temperatures near 40 C (above 100 F). Some previous Europrides in Western Europe have attracted up to 1 million celebrants.

The Warsaw parade's main demand was that Poland pass a civil-partnership law for same-sex couples.

Around 2,000 police officers protected the marchers from more than 200 anti-Gay protesters, who threw bottles of water, rocks, eggs, and Bibles at the parade, participants said. At least eight counterdemonstrators were arrested for throwing things, damaging flags or, in at least one case, assaulting a cop.

"The protesters were numerous and incredibly violent," said American Gay activist and Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, in an e-mail to California Gay leader Rick Jacobs. "The worst was when a mob threw two large, homemade percussion-style bombs over the police line and onto our float. When the second exploded, pieces of it struck both [my boyfriend] Frank and I and left me deaf in one ear for about an hour."

Black said police charged into the group from which the explosives emerged and restrained and beat the counterprotesters.

Other participants praised the event's policing, said they did not feel threatened, and hailed the parade's arrival behind the former Iron Curtain.

"It's incredibly positive that this pan-European event is now taking place in a former Communist country," said Ulrike Lunacek, co-president of the European Parliament's Intergroup on LGBT Rights. "Not only does it constitute a very important signal for Eastern Europe that mentalities do slowly change, but it also shows how membership of the European Union can facilitate this change."

Moscow Pride founder Nikolai Alekseev said: "The police did an incredible job. ... We felt very safe at all times, even when we left the parade at the end."

Other events included ILGA-Europe's "LGBT Family Exhibition - Different Families, Same Love" at the National Library from July 8 to 18 and an LGBT film festival, "Celluloid Ars Homo Erotica."

The EP Intergroup said that although Poland joined the EU in 2004, it "still fails to provide LGBT people with adequate legal protection or address omnipresent homophobia."

"Polish authorities also refuse to recognize same-sex unions registered abroad, and prevent their citizens from entering a same-sex union abroad," the group said. "Polish authorities have illegally banned LGBT human rights campaigners from marching publicly."

The late Polish President Lech Kaczynski, as then-mayor of Warsaw, banned Gay pride in 2005, leading to a 2007 ruling against the nation by the European Court of Human Rights.

Next year's Europride will be in Rome.

Court OKs Moscow mayor's calling Gays "faggots"
A libel suit filed by Moscow Pride against Mayor Yuri Luzhkov over his having called Gays "faggots" ("gomiki") was dismissed by the Moscow City Court on July 2. It previously had been rejected by the Tverskoi District Court.

Pride leader Nikolai Alekseev said the group will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

The group had wanted Luzhkov to apologize for using the slur and pay 1 kopeck in damages (about three-hundredths of a cent).

The mayor made the remark on television in June 2009 while vowing that he would never authorize a Gay parade in the city.

"Public morality does not accept those faggots," Luzhkov reportedly said. "Other people will simply kill them."

Luzhkov has banned the pride parade for five years and has sent riot police to aggressively arrest small groups of activists who have defied the bans.

He also has called Gay pride parades "satanic" and, reportedly, "weapons of mass destruction."

LGBT people managed to stage two small, brief pride marches in Moscow this year despite another ban.

For the main event, organizers misled hundreds of riot police and undercover officers to a fake location.

"The march was relatively short, around five minutes, but we managed to fool the police and the anti-pride protesters," Alekseev said.

British Gay activist Peter Tatchell, who joined the march, said: "Pride organizers fed the police a steady stream of false information, via blogs and websites, concerning the location of the parade. They suggested that it would take place outside the E.U. [European Union] Commission's offices. As a result, the police put the whole area in total lockdown."

Earlier in the day, another group of some 25 activists staged an unannounced Gay march for 10 minutes on a downtown pedestrian street. It ended when police blocked their path and the marchers ran away.

Moscow Pride organizers have sued over Luzhkov's bans in a series of cases that have been merged at the European Court of Human Rights. A ruling is expected within months.

With assistance from Bill Kelley

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