Rainbow Pride in Bratislava Attracts Turnout of 2,000, Promotes Gay Rights

Bratislava, August 19 (TASR) – Some 2,000 people have converged upon Bratislava to attend the Rainbow Pride 2017 on Saturday, TASR learnt on the same day.

Police warned the organisers that sympathizers of far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) have also come into the city, prompting the organisers to urge Pride-goers “not to provoke [them] nor allow themselves to get provoked”. The zone where the event is taking place has been sealed off by police.

According to the organisers, Rainbow Pride is designed to draw attention to obstacles faced by LGBTI community in their everyday lives. The lodestar of the event was to underline the need to introduce registered partnerships for same-sex couples, so that they would be able to take care of each other in case of illness and to ameliorate inheritance issues.

Rainbow Pride spokesman Martin Macko believes that people would start accepting gay individuals better if they knew some of them personally, a notion confirmed also by experiences of LGBTI organisations in America and Europe.

“That’s also the reason why we organise the Pride: to make ourselves visible to public,” said Rainbow Pride chair Diana Pruchnerovicova.

“The public stance could be influenced also by a change in political climate – if we had top representatives of the state or city show that LGBTI people are equal part of society,” said Macko.