Thousands of people are expected to take to the streets of Buenos Aires on Saturday (February 1) for a march to protest President Javier Milei’s recent remarks about the LGBT+ community.
A collective of LGBT+ groups and human rights activists will lead the Federal Pride March, which starts at 4pm at Congress. Demonstrators will congregate before marching to the Plaza de Mayo, in front of the Casa Rosada.
The protest was announced Tuesday in response to Milei’s recent speech at the World Economic Forum, during which he conflated homosexuality, child abuse and paedophilia by citing an isolated court case in the United States and claiming it was linked to “gender ideology” — an accusation that LGBT+ organisations branded violent.
In his speech, the La Libertad Avanza leader equated human rights issues, such as feminism and gender expression, to “the mental virus of the woke ideology.”
“Social justice is nothing more than the disguise of socialism. And socialism, in all its forms, always ends in misery,” the La Libertad Avanza leader declared.
Demonstrators will also draw attention to the government’s clampdown on what it describes as “positive discrimination.”
The Milei administration’s “equality before the law” bill, currently being drafted, would outlaw state labour employment quotas for the trans community, repeal femicide’s distinction as a criminal aggravation under the law and eliminate the non-binary option for national identification cards (DNIs).
The Pride March Organising Committee launched the call for a protest and quickly acquired support from political parties, feminist organisations and human rights defenders.
A number of political figures have confirmed their support for the march, with several planning to attend.
The government countered the public outrage by saying Milei’s comments were misquoted and pulled out of context.
“We are not against the choice of every human being. All the President did was talk about, among other things, the woke agenda, understanding that behind it is the enlargement of the State, which implies less real rights, less private property and more poverty,” claimed Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni at a press conference this week.
Meanwhile, LGBT+ activists like Manu Mireles are calling for a collective resistance to the government’s measures and rhetoric.
“The meaning of this strategy is to see how far we yield. If there is no resistance, the government's fascist project advances,” Mireles told Noticias Argentinas. “I think it will be a historic and massive march. The call will surprise us.”
by Zella Milfred
