The Australian Prime Minister, Labor Anthony Albanese, became this Saturday the first president of the oceanic country to parade through the streets of Sydney with the Mardi Gras troupes of the LGTBIQ community, as part of the WorldPride 2023 festival. .
Under the motto "gather, dream, amplify", thousands of people celebrated their sexual and gender identity as part of a great party that included some 200 comparsas, among them those of lesbians on motorcycles, the military, police, lifeguards and firefighters, as well as indigenous Australians, Sydney's Latino community, immigrants and refugees, among others.
"My government is committed to eliminating gender inequality and to continue to move forward and eliminate areas where inequality continues to exist based on people's sexuality or identity," Albanese told reporters on February 11, when announced his decision to attend the parade.
In 2016, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had already been the first Australian ruler to witness the Sydney Mardi Gras parade, which is decked out in rainbow colors and flags at this time.
Now, seven years later, Albanese became the first president to join the party and march with the comparsas through the streets.
Although the participation of Albanese, who joined the Labor Party comparsa, has been received positively by a large part of society, the initiative aroused criticism among the most conservative sectors.
One of the fiercest of those critics was former deputy prime minister and former National Party leader Barnaby Joyce, who this week had to deny on ABC public radio microphones rumors that he had effeminately mocked the outfit that Albanese would wear.
Likewise, precisely on these days, a controversial mural in the center of the city in which a man appeared with tiny leather clothes and a teddy bear to celebrate gay pride -outside the WorldPride program- woke up stained with feces and with a message that read "leave the children alone".
The Sydney World Pride will host some 300 events and will culminate with the march of some 50,000 people on the Sydney Bridge on March 5 to promote the rights of the LGTBIQ community in Australia - a country that legalized equal marriage in 2017 and where progress has been made on many fronts, although discrimination against the group persists.
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