People take part in the Christopher Street Day parade in Berlin (dpa/AP)Around 65,000 revellers have marched for LGBTQ rights at Berlin’s annual Christopher Street Day celebration – twice as many as had been expected. The parade started with a call from Klaus Lederer, Berlin’s senator for culture, to make the city a “queer-freedom zone” in response to deteriorating safety for gay and lesbian people in Hungary and neighbouring Poland. The senator also noted that the pandemic had been particularly hard for some gays and lesbians at home as shelters were closed. The parade was led by five trucks that were spaced apart to give demonstrators more room as they danced past the city’s iconic Brandenburg Gate. The celebrations were preceded by an apparent homophobic attack on a male couple in a Berlin subway late on Friday.

Source: Irish Independent July 24, 2021 16:17 UTC