San Paulo’s now notorious Pride festival keeps getting bigger and better...
San Paulo’s now notorious Pride festival keeps getting bigger and better, as more than 3 million revellers came out to take part in the festivities, bypassing last year's reported 2.5 million.
Floats made their way down the Avenida Paulista in the city's financial heart as dance music blared from huge loudspeakers.
"This is the biggest parade on the planet," Tourism Minister Marta Suplicy told the Associated Press. "Our city is showing, once again, its respect for diversity."
Said to be the largest gay pride parade in the world, this year’s festivities highlighted the need to end broader discriminations, extending beyond the LGBT community in Brazil.
"We want to address machismo, racism and homophobia [...] which still exists in Brazil," said the president of the parade, Nelson Matias Pereira.
Despite relatively progressive laws regarding discrimination activists claim that between 1980 and 2006 there have been 2,680 anti-gay murders in Brazil. Civil unions are only legal in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.
The 11th annual parade, which began in 1997 with 2,000 people, received official sponsorship this year and was attended by Brazil's ministers for tourism and sport.
The festival follows another demonstration attended by one million Evangelical Christians condemning homosexuality called the March for Jesus. One minister that spoke at the event linked homosexuality with Satanism.
San Paulo’s parade is one of an seventy gay parades around Brazil.
Click here for some fabulous coverage and pictures of the parade
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