Brussels’s Pride: celebration of progress and a challenge to politicians

Published on May 27, 2014

Brussels

“If god con­trols the weather, then god is prob­a­bly gay,” was one of the phrases that was heard around the cen­ter of Brus­sels on Sat­ur­day the 17th of May. That day, LGBTI and al­lies cel­e­brated the in­ter­na­tional day against homo and trans-pho­bia and the city of Brus­sels launched its 19th Pride Pa­rade, en­ti­tled Pride4Ev­ery1.

The Pride was kicked off with a dance set to “Army Off Me” and some very im­pres­sive flag throw­ing on the steps of the Bourse. The speeches fol­low­ing proved them­selves to be of a very po­lit­i­cal na­ture, stat­ing that when the first Pride was held in Brus­sels, the only peo­ple that at­tended were a hand­ful of LGBTI mem­bers and their friends and no politi­cians at­tend­ing, but today the Pride is al­most hun­dred thou­sand strong and with a mem­ber from al­most every party at­tend­ing. It was de­manded that in the elec­tions on the 25th of May, peo­ple should cast their vote for equal­ity, sup­port­ing only the par­ties that re­spect and en­dorse the fight against dis­crim­i­na­tion of all kinds. One of the focal points that was thor­oughly pressed was the fact that trans­gen­der in­di­vid­u­als still need to get ster­il­ized in Bel­gium. Dis­liked politi­cians were also promi­nent in the Pride, with mock­ery masks of Vladimir Putin wear­ing make-up being dis­trib­uted. A spe­cialty in this years Pa­rade was a float ti­tled “Sport­

s4All” de­mand­ing that more ac­tions should be taken to as­sure equal­ity in sports and de­feat the homo and trans-pho­bia that still thrives in­side the ath­letic world. Nu­mer­ous ver­sions of Cochel­las made their ap­pear­ance is the Pride as well, both on and off the floats, giv­ing nods to the Aus­trian win­ner of Eu­ro­vi­sion that ded­i­cated her vic­tory to the LGBTI com­mu­nity de­clar­ing it to be an un­stop­pable force that would pre­vail in 

the fight against prej­u­dice. Over­all the Pride seemed to be a great suc­cess. The weather was on the side of the cause mak­ing the whole ex­pe­ri­ence a lot more en­joy­able after hav­ing suf­fered some rainy days dur­ing the last weeks, as was the Prime Min­is­ter Elio Di Rupo who tweeted that he was “very proud of the moder­nity of our coun­try, that de­fends the val­ues of lib­erty, re­spect and tol­er­ance.”

Do you still want more? Here you have our Pride Photo Gallery: 

Photo Gallery:Photo Gallery