Prague Pride 2016 Supporting Equal Right to Love

Love will be the topic of the Prague Pride festival which will be taking place between the 8th and 14th of August. For the sixth year in a row Prague Pride will be celebrating and drawing attention to the topic of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights to love. 

“We are all born with a gift; to love and be loved in return. Despite this, the Czech society is being faced with obstacles such as: homophobia, no right to adopt children with a same-sex partner, no right to legal marriage just to name some,” - Katerina Saparova, the Director of the Prague Pride festival. Thus the Prague Pride festival, the biggest pride event in Eastern Europe, will be emphasizing the joys of unconditional love through inviting its participants to express who they love. The campaign “I LOVE___” was created by the marketing agency TL5.

The topic of Love will be relevant throughout the entire Prague Pride festival. More than 100 different events will include exhibitions, theatre shows, film screenings, concerts, public debates, symposiums and sport events. The main locations for the festival will be Pride Village on Strelecky Island, Pride Theatre in Svandovo Divadlo and Pride House in Langans – People in Need Centre, where public debates will take place. The Prague Pride Opening at Strelecky Island will take place on Monday the 8th of August featuring Adam Misik, Vladivojsko and the swing legend Jitka Zelenkova.

The most prominent guest of this year’s festival will be Omar Sharif Jr. (grandson of the film star Omar Sharif). Omar Sharif Jr. is a LGBT activist and the first public figure to have come out as gay in the Arab world. Other notable guests heading to Prague Pride include the transgender priest Shannon T. L. Kearns, Jacob Huang from the Chinese LGBT NGO Aibai, the co-founder of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from San Francisco going under the name of sister Vish PHB etc. The members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will take part in Prague Pride and will amongst other things participate in the Rainbow Tram ride; part of the HIV/AIDS prevention campaign.

A novelty this year will be a LGBT Tourism Symposium. It is worth noting that the topic of LGBT tourism will be discussed for the first time publicly within Eastern Europe. Part of its program will also focus on transgender tourism. This event will welcome LGBT tourism experts from the US, UK, Germany and China. The entire symposium will be introduced by the Minister of Local Development Karla Slechtova.

The main event of Prague Pride will be the traditional parade through Prague which will take place on Saturday the 13th August. It will start at 1 pm on Wenceslas Square and continue to the Letna public park. During the march, participants will pay respects to the victims of the tragic shootings in Orlando by releasing balloons and holding a minute of silence.

A complete programme of Prague Pride can be already found at www.praguepride.com and in a Convene mobile app by Thompson Reuters for iOS and Android.

The Prague pride 2016 is held under the auspices of the Senator Vaclav Laska, the Minister of Human Rights, Equal Opportunities and Legislation Jiri Dienstbier, the Mayor of Prague Adriana Krnacova and the Advisor for Culture and Communal Relations in Prague 7 Hana Trestikova.