For the first time in the city’s history, St. Gallen is set to stage a pride event to help celebrate the LGBTQ+ community in Switzerland. The event’s organisers are keen to get people in Eastern Switzerland talking about LGBTQ+ rights in the country.
Pride events take place in several Swiss cities every year, with the largest celebrations in Zurich, Bern, Lucerne and Geneva. The new parade will be organised by the St. Gallen Pride association, which will use the motto "Time to show your colours" as the theme of the event.
The St Gallen Pride association said in a press release that the event will provide an opportunity to make Eastern Switzerland more open to LGBTQ+ rights and ideals. They said the motto is "an invitation to St. Gallen to move forward, to include queer people and to make them visible."
The organisers said that despite the interest in the event, they still expect to see some resistance. “Resistance is already noticeable in online comments. But we hope that a large part of the St. Gallen population understands our concerns and shows solidarity with us”, Andi Giger from the St. Gallen Pride association told Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten.
After same-sex marriage was approved in a referendum and enacted in 2022, the LGBTQ+ community in Switzerland have become more empowered, but there is still more to do in order to promote equal treatment of the LGBTQ+ community in Switzerland. Since the 1970s, the country has seen the rise of strong gay and lesbian civil rights movements, celebrating the community and campaigning for equality.
On June 24, 1978, Switzerland held its first ever Christopher Street Day - which is Germany and Switzerland’s answer to Pride. Since then, members of the LGBTQ+ community have been hosting events across the country, including the first-ever Pride in Canton Ticino in 2018. St. Gallen now hopes to join the long list of cities and cantons that celebrate the Swiss LGBTQ+ community as it plans to host its very own Pride on August 12, 2023.
Image: Shutterstock.com / Stefano Ember