ISTANBUL – Police in Istanbul have used tear gas and have detained activists who gathered to mark gay pride week after authorities banned their rally in the city. At least 19 activists have been detained.
Police on Sunday rounded up several activists who assembled on a main pedestrian street to issue a statement in honour of gay rights and to denounce the ban. Police later fired tear gas and rubber pellets to disperse activists gathering in side streets. Two European Parliament legislators were also briefly detained.
Istanbul’s governor banned both last week’s Trans Pride March and Sunday’s broader LGBT pride parade, citing security concerns.
Last week, police also used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up demonstrators who gathered for the transgender parade in defiance of the ban.
homophobia
If you feel the need to “keep race out of” the Orlando Pulse massacre and continue to whitewash LGBT identity, you not only lack empathy for people of color (which, surprise, is racism) but you’re also contributing to the very dehumanization & hatred of LGBT PoC that leads to massacres like these.
Yes, all members of the LGBT community can be targets and victims of homophobia but let’s stop pretending that those of us who live at the intersection of multiple identities aren’t more victimized and less mourned because society is more willing to excuse and ignore violence and hate crimes against, for example, Black trans women than cis white gay men.
The victims of this massacre were predominantly Black and Latinx. The murderer chose that location not only because he hated LGBT folks, women, and Black people, but also because he knew society views people with those identities, especially combined, as expendable and culpable for violence against them. That matters. It’s really transparent that y’all are pretending like race doesn’t factor in because y’all need to assume the victims were white so you can mourn and use this to forefront issues that primarily concern and benefit white LG people to the detriment of LGBT PoC.
mcdyke: This is specifically anti-gay – not anti-White, like the islamophobes will promote. [Here is the video with the quote.]
tintenfischie 