MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Buenos Aires Gay Community warns of dangers under Milei

Although June is Pride Month almost everywhere, Buenos Aires holds its annual march in November

The Organizing Committee of Argentina's Gay Pride March issued a statement on its social media condemning recent statements from Worship Secretary Francisco Sánchez while accompanying President Javier Milei on his Spanish tour which included a stop at a get-together of far-right political forces hosted by Vox and where the South American leader delivered a speech that resulted in Madrid's Socialist administration pulling its ambassador from Buenos Aires.

Sánchez “wielded a speech full of anachronistic, discriminatory. and highly retrograde ideas,” the Committee said. These ideas “directly attack our acquired rights such as equal marriage, the right to legal, safe and free abortion and even divorce, a right achieved in 1987” which the Libertarian government official said he wanted to be repealed.

These remarks resulted in Presidential Spokesman Manuel Adorni explaining that Sánchez's expressions were of a “personal nature” and did not respond to the Government's agenda. “This is why we, from the Organizing Committee of the Pride March, request the National Government to ask for the resignation of the Secretary of Worship of the Nation.”

The group said that these statements were “an attack against our rights, but they also promote more hate speeches against our community.” In addition, “official speeches in violent tones against our community foster a climate of contempt towards diversities, which tend to become concrete actions that endanger our integrity.”

The committee also recalled the recent murder of four women of a homosexual sex preference in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Barracas which was dubbed “a lesbicide” both by gay activists and by the broad Argentine society.

“The hate crimes against Roxana, Pamela, Andrea, and Sofia in Barracas are proof of this. These are not isolated crimes, they respond to the climate of violence that official discourses propitiate,” the group insisted.

As Milei's approval keeps sinking by the hour given the increasing number of people falling into extreme poverty, it remains to be seen how these issues play out during the Buenos Aires Gay Pride on Nov. 4.

Although June is Gay Pride month internationally, not all commemorating events are held on the same date worldwide. Not even in the same month. The Buenos Aires event is usually held in early November from the iconic Plaza de Mayo to the Congress building, marking another anniversary of the 1967 founding of Nuestro Mundo, Argentina's first gay association. The first Buenos Aires LGBT March took place in 1992, bringing together around 300 people.

On the other side, São Paulo held its 28th LGBT+ Pride Parade last Sunday along Avenida Paulista. The event featured numerous drag queens, superheroes, and people donning erotic fetish gear. There were also those wearing rainbow-colored clothing while others preferred yellow and green outfits “to show that the Brazilian flag belongs to all of us, not just one political party,” drag queen Cacau was quoted by Agencia Brasil as saying. “Everyone has the right to wear our colors, and we're not just going to leave it to a specific type of person,” in an implicit reference to what supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro wear at political rallies.

Chilean LGBT+ groups will hold their event on June 29 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality and revindicate other legal measures while protesting against the National Institute of Statistics (INE) for not including questions about sexual orientation and trans children and adolescents in the 2024 census. The Chilean Army's alleged homophobia is also to be denounced.

Gay Pride Uruguay is scheduled for Sept. 29 in Montevideo. The march is to conclude in the footsteps of the Legislative Palace.

June became LGBTQ Pride Month after the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City springboarded the wave standing for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people. Although most Pride events are staged this month, many local organizations prefer to stage them on other dates to remember other occasions of similar relevance at a local level.

The 1969 case broke out at the Stonewall Inn, a mafia-run gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood when in the wee hours of June 28, patrons decided to fight back during a police raid.

“We had no idea whether the people who were on their fire escapes, at their windows, or lining the sidewalks were there to cheer us on, or there to harm us,” recalled Ellen Broidy in a recent interview about the June 28, 1970, Christopher Street Liberation Day March, which is now regarded as the first pride event. “[But it was] completely celebratory once we stepped out onto the street and gained courage from each other. It felt like a huge statement about liberation. I've never spoken to anybody who regretted, for an instant, being there.”

Despite the progress achieved since those days, including US President Bill Clinton declaring June in 1999 to be “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month,” new threats shadow the festive activity, such as the possibility of domestic far-right or Islamist terror organizations targeting them. In 2016, a man inspired by IS ideology shot and killed 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. In 2023, three IS sympathizers were arrested for attempting to attack a Pride parade in Vienna, Austria. At least 145 incidents were recorded in the US during Pride Month in 2023.