10th Athens Pride Festival Was ‘A Family Affair’

The LGBT community of Athens celebrated the 10th Athens Pride Festival with a parade on Sunday, June 14. The parade started in Klafthmonos Square at 7pm and ended in Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek Parliament. The Festival’s motto for this year was “A Family Affair”. The main goals of Athens Pride 2014 was to raise awareness in regards to the possibility of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transsexuals in creating a legally recognized family. “The Greek state continues to deprive us of this right. They deny us our rights even after the decision of the European Court of Human Rights on November 7, 2013, according to which ‘Greece had violated the European Convention on Human Rights, excluding same-sex couples from civil unions.’ Equal access to family law is a fundamental requirement for a modern democracy. Excluding citizens from civil unions, marriage, procreation and adoption on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity, means the essential and selective exclusion from state protection and deprivation of the security it provides. As a result it shakes the stability of one’s personal life, while it burdens their everyday life both emotionally and financially,” stated the organizers. This year’s parade theme stressed the meaning of family as defined by any person in the LGBT community. For this reason, the poster for Athens Pride Festival 2014 shows the archetypal couple as Adam and Adam, united with their child, Eros, as an example of a LGBT family.

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