Last night’s opening of the Budapest Gay Pride Festival was not without incident: Two teens described as neo-Nazis physically assaulted one attendee who was exiting the event, while a dozen or so “spent a long time shouting verbal insults and tried to break the rainbow flag off the cinema wall, but the police officers posted outside the cinema managed to prevent this.” As for the assault victim? “The riot police quickly appeared in large numbers. But they surrounded the victim and demanded that he identify himself while the perpetrators walked away from the scene.” [UKGN; photo from 2009]
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
Well it took almost 10 years in New York, San Francisco, LA, and Chicago before local police departments acted to protect pride attendees. And even after another 30 years, there is hardly a pride event in the US that is not marred by anti-gay violence.
But isn’t that part of the reason we march? Isn’t facing the bigotry and homophobia an effort to make things better for the future?
I wish the brave LGBT community in Hungary all the best as they too push for their dignity. We do have something worth fighting for; the neo-nazis there and the teabagger nutcases here only have their worthlessness.