Prague, July 31 (CTK) – The 8th Prague Pride festival of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT) to be held on August 6-12 will focus on the family, its support and rejection topics, its organisers told reporters on Tuesday.
The festival will offer more than 100 theatre performances, film screenings, seminars, debates and sport events. It will culminate with the Saturday carnival march of pride through the centre of Prague.
“In the campaign, we want to mainly focus on how often homosexual children are considered black sheep of the family,” festival director Hana Kulhankova said.
This year, the festival also wants to point out that the people from the LGBT community are often labelled according to their inborn predisposition, which says nothing about their real characteristics.
“We would like gays, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to be perceived as comprehensive personalities who are something more than the gay or lesbian labels,” Kulhankova said.
The culmination of the one-week festival will be a traditional march in Prague to be held on August 11.
Its route will be slightly different than in the past years due to the reconstruction of the lower part of Wenceslas Square.
The march will go from the upper part of Wenceslas Square, through Opletalova and Hybernska streets to Republic Square and then continue as usual along Revolucni street, across Cech bridge and up the stairs to Letna plain where an entertaining programme with music, catering and the NGO’s fair will be prepared.
This year, the march will highlight that gays and lesbians in the Czech Republic still cannot adopt children or take them in foster care, the registered partners have no right to joint property and widow’s or widower’s pension and that transgender people must undergo sterilisation to be able to change sex it their IDs, the organisers said.
The participants will also celebrate a bill opening a debate on the possibility of same-sex marriages that was recently submitted to parliament.
Three personalities, whom the festival awarded for their contribution to the LGBT community, will take part in the Prague Pride March. The Marshal titles were given to Dutch transgender model Loiza Lamers for being a foreign role model, Czech lesbian Jana Kocianova for her contribution to the community and psychologist Vaclav Mertin for his support for families with homosexual parents.
This year, the festival has started cooperating with the Safety Helpline that will open a discussion about the most frequent questions it receives from the LGBT children and their parents.
People can also use a chance to be tested for HIV as well as hepatitis of A and B types within the Prague Pride. The organisers said they hoped that up to 1000 can be tested during one afternoon.
The festival programme offers other topics as well, such as the rights of homosexuals in Turkey and Central Asia.
The organisers have prepared 127 events for the public. The whole programme is available on www.praguepride.cz.
