Public Gay Pride to be celebrated next year

TIRANA, July 2 – A committee that is to organize the holding of the first Gay Pride march next year was founded by the gay rights NGOs, in a next move after the organization of a diversity festival earlier this year.
Last Friday the Pink Embassy and LGBT Pro Albania said that “we are working on creating the Organizing Committee for Tirana Pride 2013, which will manage the organization of activities culminating in a parade.”
In May this year Albania has launched its International Day against Homophobia with a series of events promoting gay rights, while supporters of a Muslim forum demonstrated nearby accusing organizers of violating family values.
The event was among hundreds around the world promoting tolerance, respect and freedom for gays and transgendered people. The event opened with a news conference, and was followed by photo exhibitions, leaflet distribution, and lectures. It will end with a party at a bar in the capital’s downtown area. Elsewhere in Tirana scores of Muslims gathered near the Defense and Interior ministries as imams denounced the gay community as “perverse,” ”deviant” and “degenerate.”
Police kept a close watch on both events.
The series of public events in May in Tirana pushed for greater acceptance of the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual lifestyle.
Albania’s parliament decriminalized homosexuality in 1995 but still gays and lesbians are still heavily stigmatized with many of them concealing their true sexual orientation.
The Pride organizing committee said that activists and sympathizers will march along the city’s “Dёshmorёt e Kombit” boulevard holding the LGBT flag in order to demand respect, equality and dignity for the rights of the LGBT community in Albania.
This year they also said they would partly do that move and also take the flag at the premier’s office but it was not done.