{"id":8413,"date":"2002-02-06T17:57:10","date_gmt":"2002-02-06T16:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bandeapartfilms.com\/nouveausite1\/5503\/"},"modified":"2019-01-16T09:47:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T08:47:43","slug":"5503","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bandeapartfilms.com\/en\/5503\/","title":{"rendered":"The Parade (our history)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parades to demonstrate gay pride may be a well-established fact of life in cities such as Paris and Berlin \u2013 but this is not the case in Sion. In this Catholic stronghold, which is also capital of the ruggedly mountainous Swiss canton of Valais, a group of six women and a man, led by Marianne Bruchez, dared to organise the first gay parade ever held in this small provincial town. The date: July 2001. It took real courage not to yield to the forces working against them: the community officials refused to issue the required permit for the parade, local protesters published a slanderous full-page article in the local newspaper associating \u201cqueers\u201d with \u201cdevils\u201d (\u201cAunts in Sion = diabolic temptation!\u201d), and the gay community itself fell to wrangling, accusing the Valais organisers of being \u201ctoo timid\u201d. Marianne Bruchez, a young thirty-year-old woman with no previous experience as a gay activist, suddenly found herself making front-page news in Swiss newspapers, and being forced to accept high-profile media visibility of the worst sort.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
\n\n