a special flavor on the eve of the elections

Lhe date – Saturday June 29 – was of course set for a long time. On the eve of the first round of surprise legislative elections, the 24^e Biarritz LGBT+ pride march will have a very special flavor. If the festive meeting (read elsewhere) is always protesting, the political context adds additional gravity to this 2024 vintage.

“We are in anguish,” summarizes Franck-Yves Guilbert of the Les Bascos association. &ldquo…

Lhe date – Saturday June 29 – was of course set for a long time. On the eve of the first round of surprise legislative elections, the 24^e Biarritz LGBT+ pride march will have a very special flavor. If the festive meeting (read elsewhere) is always protesting, the political context adds additional gravity to this 2024 vintage.

“We are in anguish,” summarizes Franck-Yves Guilbert of the Les Bascos association. “But this anxiety motivates us even more to say no to LGBTphobia and hatred. The RN’s positions are not there to appease: they demand a rejection of others and of diversity in all its forms which cannot make society open. We contacted elected officials and candidates in this regard by letter,” indicates the head of activist actions at the LGBT + Sud Aquitaine center.

Almost half of respondents say they have already felt a feeling of insecurity because of their emotional orientation or their gender identity.

The letter recalls the impact of legislative work in the battles they are waging. It lists the demands of associations defending LGBT+ rights: “Strengthening laws against discrimination”; promotion and financing of training for stakeholders to strengthen educational actions on these subjects in schools; reminder that “transphobia and homophobia are crimes, not opinions”; financial aid to associations so that they can carry out their awareness-raising and social support work.

Still a long way

Franck-Yves Guilbert also mentions “the defense of the rights of transgender adolescents” and cites “the proposed LR law which aims to prohibit minors from gender transitions”. For example, being prescribed puberty blockers and feminizing or masculinizing hormones while waiting to be able to choose, at age 18, to resort to surgery.

All these demands are intended to be responses to statistics from the survey conducted each year by the LGBT + Sud Aquitaine Center. In the territories of its three branches (Basque Country, Landes and Béarn) the association probes the reality of “LGBT + phobias” in order to “better adjust its actions on the ground”.

Across these three sectors, on average, almost half of respondents say they have already felt a feeling of insecurity because of their emotional orientation or their gender identity. In Béarn this feeling concerns all urban young people under 25 (78% in rural areas) while their Basque counterparts in the same age category are 12% who say they feel insecure in the city (25% in rural areas). ).

Among the striking figures of this inventory which examines all aspects of daily life from family to professional life, we note for example that almost all of the respondents were victims or witnesses of verbal violence due to their orientation. emotional or their gender identity throughout their school career. Physical violence, in this same context, concerns two thirds of them. Despite the rights obtained in recent years, progress remains fragile.