Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Demerara Waves reports:
Guyana held its first gay pride parade, with the country’s gay rights activists accusing the three-year old government as well as the opposition of breaking their election campaign promises to outlaw discrimination against vulnerable groups.
“We are saying enough of the rhetoric, enough of the promises. It is time to make good on the legislative changes that we heard about from both parties in the 2015 elections and we want to see action and we want action now,” Joel Simpson told reporters. He acknowledged that the gay and lesbian community in Guyana is small but “our rights need to be respected like everybody else’s rights so this is a very, very visible way of demanding our rights.”
Simpson, who heads the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), said the parade was incident-free. “The parade was incident free. There was a lot of chatter on Social Media here and there and so on but Guyana did us well, Guyana did us proud. We had a completely incident-free, safe, non-violent, first ever Guyana gay pride parade,” he said.
Guyana, population 770,000, became independent from Britain in 1966. It is the only country in South America where homosexuality remains criminalized, although penalties, which can include life imprisonment, are not enforced.
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Yesterday, @SASODGuyana, @GuyanaTrans & Guyana Rainbow Foundation hosted #Guyana’s first #LGBTQI #Pride celebrations – what a way to kick off Pride Month! Congratulations neighbors? via @CaribEquality pic.twitter.com/jOS2jIU3r6
— WE-Change (@WEChangeJA) June 3, 2018