Promoting Equality and Visibility: Exploring Liège’s LGBTQ+ Pride Movement

2023-06-26 06:05:54

At the beginning of June, the City communicated on the organization, as in other cities in the world, of a “Liège Pride” which might see the light of day on August 23-24 and 25, 2024. It would be a procession intended to give visibility to homosexual, bisexual, queer, transgender or other people and to claim freedom and equality of sexual orientations and gender identities. “A first in Wallonia”, implied the official communication.

Except that, in the middle, this last statement went wrong. If the fact that such an ambulatory demonstration is indeed a first in Wallonia, several other “pride” type events have already been created. The Namur and Verviétoise “Prides” or the City Pride Montoise currently exist. But they are static, remaining in the same place. As the Pride de Liège organized for 3 years by the Transpédégouine* collective, on the Saint-Léonard esplanade. A demonstration which was authorized by the City and which it therefore knew of the existence. It was also held on May 27 with 300 to 400 people, barely a week before the announcement of the new local pride.

So why create a new Liège association, soon to be subsidized, rather than supporting those that already exist and organize with no or very little means, inclusive events that make minorities of the queer, trans, inter, non-binary genders more visible? etc ? “These are people close to the PS that we have never seen in militant circles“says a regular activist. One of the founders is in any case a member of the cabinet of a socialist alderman, another socialist CPAS adviser,… . “This new Liège Pride was set up without any consultation with the actors in the field“. In the Ardent City, the organizers of Transpédégouine suddenly feel denigrated by the City. “The new pride will be more of an occasion to party. A kind of techno parade with no real political message but with more visibility“, analyzes Eïden, who is one of them. Visibility for electoral purposes?

For his part, Cyrille Prestianni, president of the Rainbow House explains that his association, the reference in Liège on these subjects for twenty years (and subsidized by the City), will support the new event.

A name that constitutes a “reversal of stigmata”, a way of transforming insults into pride
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