10 Years of Marriage Equality: Reflecting on the Paris LGBT+ Pride March and the Fight Against Violence

2023-06-24 23:14:00

Tens of thousands of people took part in the LGBT+ pride march in Paris on Saturday, this year marking 10 years of marriage for all, while six young people were arrested shortly before for attacking a person. joining the protest.

The police headquarters counted 56,000 participants in the pride march. A dense crowd had begun to gather on the Place de la Nation at midday, to the sound of drums and between the many stands of rainbow flags, the rallying sign of the demonstration.

This Parisian “pride” took shape behind the only truck present, carrying the banner “For ten years, marriage for all, always violence for all”. Elisa Koubi, co-president of Inter-LGBT, which organized the parade, explained beforehand that “marriage for all put an end to inequality but did not make all LGBT + in France equal and serene “.

At midday, six young men were arrested in Paris for attacking a woman who, with a rainbow flag in her hand, was joining the pride march, we learned from a source. policewoman. They pushed her around and made homophobic remarks.

All are minors and one of them is known to belong to the ultra-right movement, the same source added.

While several LGBT+ centers have also recently been the target of damage or attacks, the government must soon present a plan to better combat anti-LGBT+ violence.

“The right to be yourself”

In the audience, which included many young people, Julie, 17, justified her first participation by “the need to support the cause (…) for the right to be yourself”.

Also presenting herself as “omnisexual with a male preference”, her friend Flavia, 17, explained that she had been “subjected to harassment in college” by students because of an alleged homosexual orientation.

The parade kicked off in the early followingnoon, with a concert of percussion and a dizzying variety of outfits, ranging from the simple swim trunks of a member of the LGBT-friendly rugby club “Les coqs festifs”, to costumes of Afro-Caribbean community carnival.

Designed in a logic of “eco-responsibility”, the event included a small electric train, and above all a noria of cargo bikes and other tuk-tuks to carry banners and loudspeakers for music.

Other pride marches were also held on Saturday, including one in Dijon which brought together 2,000 to 2,500 people, according to the prefect of Côte d’Or, Franck Robine, who “denounced” in a press release “unacceptable damage” on the sidelines of the event.

In the city center, “individuals carried out numerous tags and damage to shops and banking establishments and chanted slogans once morest the police”, he said, and two people were arrested. The prefect “deplores that this event was thus used and spoiled by these unacceptable actions in a democracy where the freedom to demonstrate is an essential value to be preserved”.

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