Latvian pride
participants attacked by protesters over weekend

Latvian gays and lesbians, along with supporters from the European Union and the United States, dodged antigay protesters in the capital city of Riga on Saturday to stage alternative gay pride events after an official parade was banned. Around 50 gays and their supporters, including Dutch European lawmaker Sophie Int'Veld, were blockaded by an angry mob inside a church where they had gathered for a morning service to show solidarity with sexual minorities. The mob chanted slogans and pelted some of the churchgoers with human excrement when they left the mass. Viktors Birze, leader of the Latvian national radical organization NSS, told Agence France-Presse, "Homosexuals are dirty sinners. They are immoral people, and they don't have a place in normal society." Outside a hotel, where a hastily organized alternate event took place, more than 200 antigay protesters gathered, mostly Russian Christian fundamentalists and Latvian nationalists. They spat at people as they entered the hotel and threw eggs at them as they left. This year's gay pride march was to have taken place in the capital on Saturday but was banned by the Riga city council last week, ostensibly because of concerns over security. Last year was the first time gay pride festivities took place in Latvia, which joined the European Union in 2004. (Sirius OutQ News)