Mayors of Paris and Berlin Join in Gay Pride Celebrations

Paris and Berlin celebrated gay pride Saturday with rollicking parades that drew revelers who held hands, waved rainbow banners and danced to techno beats. The cities’ mayors, both openly gay, were at the center of the festivities.

Bertrand Delanoe, the first Paris mayor to participate in his city’s parade, held a banner reading “All together against discrimination” as he led a parade of tens of thousands in the French capital.

In Berlin, the rainbow flag symbolizing the gay rights movement flew over City Hall for the first time as thousands turned out to watch or participate in the parade.

Klaus Wowereit, the German capital’s mayor, was greeted by cheering crowds as he took to the podium and promised to lead the city in tolerance and to fight politically against the neo-Nazi scene.

“We won’t give the right extremists a finger’s width,” Wowereit said.

In a sign of greater acceptance of gay politicians in some parts of Europe, city lawmakers chose Wowereit for the post of interim mayor June 16, only a few months after Delanoe was elected.

People camped out along the parade route that wound though Paris, past the site of the former Bastille jail, heading north to the Place de la Republique.

In 1999, France passed a law giving unmarried couples, including gays, some of the same rights as married couples, including the right to file joint tax forms.

On Friday, the Belgian government approved a bill to fully legalize same-sex weddings, a measure that, if approved by Parliament, would make the country the second in the world to recognize gay marriages, after the Netherlands.