Worldly Chatter

Today is the first day of the three-day affair that will take over parts of Amsterdam! It is one of the biggest gay pride parades and festival on the globe and it is a blast! Gays and straights alike join in for the parties and canal parade and it can go on until the wee hours of the morning! My first gay pride was last year in Amsterdam and it was Dutchie, myself and another couple we knew who met up and had dinner together, partied and drank until the last train took us home! And trust me on this, you see all walks of life when you are there. You could see families with their children, gay, lesbian, transgendered, and everything imaginable in between. There were some interesting clothing choices and the canals showed off everything everyone had to off! There were stands and booths for services for AIDS prevention as well as counseling and advice. Bars and clubs were hopping and live music with little stands serving Heineken was everywhere! What a blast! It wasn’t just a means for us to show ourselves off, flaunt it and demand the things gays and lesbians have been trying to get for years now. It was also a means for the outside world to see a bit of us and how we really are. Not all of the festivities is flamboyant and full of drama queens with butchie women tough in their tanks and military cuts, it was also a sense that we are just as everyone else is. You really could see in some parts of the festivities that they wanted people to see we aren’t evil, that we have culture, history and class.

Dutchie and I are unable to attend this year’s event. We originally intended it, booking a room in Amsterdam for two nights and made plans with some friends. Yet with Dutchie sick and making other plans for Ridderkerk and Den Haag we had to cancel the reservations and inform our friends we weren’t able to make it. Other stuff came up of more importance. Yet this will not deter me from informing you of it and linking you to this year’s big weekend!

Another thing that has been going on in Dutch life is that Dutch embassies situating in several countries where it is in good relations, gives aid is pushing to change legislation in countries where gay, and lesbians are beaten, exiled or executed based on who they are. They want to put their influence into practice and try to stop the current legislation stating homosexuality is illegal, taking inventory of every country and law it currently sits in, which is 36 and of that 18 currently hold such legislation. I hope it does some good and works to save those who suffer far worse than I can possibly imagine. (article here

Picture Property of www.amsterdamgaypride.nl

gay pride, worldly chatter, Amsterdam gay pride, glbt community, gay and lesbian news