Gay pride attacks

August 5th, 2008, 19:22 | No comments

In the latest issue of The Guide, I comment on the recent attacks on gay pride parades in Brno and Budapest:

In Brno on June 28, the Czech Republic’s first-ever pride march faced an assault by dozens of neo-Nazis that left 20 of the 500 gay demonstrators injured. Police and the extremists clashed for some 45 minutes at the end of the parade route, and some 15 were arrested.

Does the greater tolerance evident in this year’s somewhat more peaceful prides in Moscow, Warsaw, and Bucharest mean that the anti-gay sore spot is shifting Westward?

Not necessarily, says Karl Anderson, editor of the Prague-based gay magazine Destroyer, who contends this year’s violence in the Czech Republic and Hungary doesn’t have deep roots.

“Unlike what had happened in Poland and Russia, the parade wasn’t attacked by regular citizens, but by extremists,” Anderson says. “These countries have a tradition of being open-minded and secularized. The attacks don’t reflect attitudes at large.”

Read the whole article here.

Category: Media

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