[2010-07-04 Latin American Herald Tribune]
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=359746&CategoryId=12395
Sunday July 04, 2010
Transsexuals Take Leading Role in Madrid’s Gay Pride Parade
MADRID – Thousands of people paraded Saturday [2010-07-03] through downtown Madrid in a festive, colorful march giving visibility of transsexuals, a group that took the leading role in this year’s Gay Pride demonstration in Spain.
The parade attracted, according to the organizers – the State Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals, or FELGTB, and Madrid’s COGAM gay-rights organization – more than a million people, a number similar to previous years.
The banner at the head of the parade, with the slogan “For Trans Equality,” was carried by Spain’s minister of equality, Bibiana Aido, who joined in minutes after the event began, together with other representatives of leftist political parties.
Marching with them was the Israeli transsexual Suku Alexander, representing the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals of Israel, after the organization barred the presence of the Tel Aviv float for not condemning the attack on the so-called “Freedom Flotilla.”
Both the politicians and the organizers voiced their complaint that even now in the 21st century transsexuals are officially considered sick people.
Spain’s minister of equality recalled that the Spanish government has urged the World Health Organization to remove transsexuality from the international classification of illnesses.
For his part, the president of the FELGTB, Antonio Poveda, said that “transsexuals, the most vulnerable group in our world, must have the same rights that we already enjoy as lesbians, gays and bisexuals.”
Besides transsexuals, the March of Pride commemorated this year the fifth anniversary of Spain’s enacting the law allowing same-sex marriages.
For that reason, the first of the more than 30 floats in the parade was for diverse families: a double-decker bus in which families of lesbians, gays, transexuals and bisexuals displayed the realities of their lives.
The organizers again insisted that the demonstration is basically a protest, though in fact it becomes a festival of fun to attract participation.
To the rhythm of drums and the sound of songs that have become classics in parades of this kind, such as “A Quien Le Importa” (Who Cares) by Alaska, the demonstrators crowded the streets of downtown Madrid dressed in the most widely diverse and flamboyant costumes while carrying flags with all the colors of the rainbow.
The manifesto read at the end of the march insisted that transsexuals have the right to be treated as they were born, as what they have really always been.
And to achieve that, they have asked for an overhaul of the educational system because it does not acknowledge the existence of this diversity; of the health system, so that “in every community the transsexualizing process can be attended to”; of the mind of those who believe that transsexuality is a sickness; and of the workplace with its measures of discrimination.
—
Copyright Latin American Herald Tribune – 2009 ©
Women Born Transsexual 
July 5, 2010 at 4:42 am
I am very uncomfortable with the events around this parade.
They banned a float from Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv is the only city in the entire middle east that gay arabs from Gaza and Palestine can actually be seen in, without being killed, by people from there own countries.
Tel Aviv is the only city in the entire Middle East that can have a gay pride parade, due to the fact that if they had it in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Gaza, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Morrocco, Sudan, Dubai, UAE, etc, everyone at the parade would be summarily executed, there and then.
As for Gaza.
I really do hope the gay organisers of this boycott of Tel Aviv travel to Gaza in the near future. There execution at the hands of Hamas would be interesting to read in the media and Darwin Awards.
Hamas consider gay people to be subhuman and regularly kills them.
A few questions need to be raised about this.
Why have those organisers of the Pride march not banned everyone from Middle Eastern countries which regularly torture and execute gay people from taking part?
In Saudi Arabia, they have regular, very popular events, were gay people are beheaded in front of large cheering crowds. Why are the organisers not banning anyone from Saudi Arabia from attending?
In Iraq, insurgents have exterminsted all the transsexual people, yet Iraqi’s were not banned from the Pride March. Why not?
The answer is, they are not Jewish.
That was about Anti-semitism, nothing else. Blatant anti-semetic hipocrisy reaks from this.
I have noticed how recently it has started to become acceptable to be anti-semetic again. I have watched it spread.
I never hear gay groups complaining about transsexual people are persecuted in Gaza and Iraq. They only ever mention gays and if a transsexual person is shown in a video, they are invisibilised as gay.
For the, gays were in the military and had rights before, Spain, UK and the USA. The rights of gays in Israel had been upheld unaniously in the courts in Israel. Something that a few people might wish to consider, when comparing with other countries in the Middle East.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East which protects the rights of women, children, gays, transsexuals and other groups, right to actually exist or exist with there own freedom of thought.
Anyone who wishes to compare those rights should move to a country such as Saudi Arabia, Gaza or Iraq and be out and proud. I am sure the news of the execution will be posted on a number of blogs and probbably the Darwin Awards.
Israel is not perfect, far from it. However compared to other Middle Eastern Countries, it is a bastion of human rights.