BULGARIA: Bulgarian officials have banned the country's first gay parade, in the latest clash between homosexuals and conservatives on the European Union's eastern fringe.
The grand opening of a gay festival in Varna, a popular Black Sea resort, was abandoned after the local mayor ordered participants to stay off the streets and cancel outdoor events.
The planned parade was scrapped under intense pressure from the Orthodox Church, which had threatened to hold a protest march to complain about the gay event.
"Such public gatherings push young people into low moral behaviour, and destroy Orthodox Christian values," declared Metropolitan Kiril, a senior local clergyman.
Desi Petrova, an organiser of the festival, threatened to sue those responsible for derailing her plans.
"The inaugural event of the homosexual and transvestite days - for which guests from Greece, Italy, Spain and Switzerland had been invited - has been banned," she said.
"This is the first national gathering of gay people in Bulgaria and we wanted to accompany it with a public-awareness campaign. However, we were told to cut off public events, to stay neatly closed indoors."
The festival will continue in clubs around Varna, but its removal from the streets was the latest setback for gay activists across the former communist bloc, in countries like Poland and Latvia that joined the EU last May, and Bulgaria and Romania that hope to follow them in 2007.
Warsaw mayor and presidential candidate Lech Kaczynski banned a gay parade through the Polish capital in June, citing irregularities in a request for permission.
Nevertheless, about 2,500 people joined the illegal march, and endured eggs, stones and abuse hurled by protesters from religious and right-wing groups.
The parade passed off without serious incident, but opinion polls suggested that more than half of all Poles supported Mr Kaczynski's stance.
To the north, Latvia's capital Riga banned a gay pride march in July, just hours after Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis questioned the morality of the event.
"I find it inappropriate that in the heart of our capital, next to the Dome Cathedral, a sexual minority parade will take place," he said.
"We are a nation based on Christian ethics, and we should not promote things unacceptable to the majority of the community."
The city council eventually let the parade go ahead, but the few dozen marchers were heavily outnumbered by police and protesters, one of whom waved a banner saying: "The only way to cure homosexuality is with the gas chamber."
Romania's gays fared slightly better when a few hundred of them paraded through Bucharest in May, separated by riot police from baying, missile-throwing protesters.
Calls to ban the march were again led by right-wing groups and the church, which - whether Catholic or Orthodox - still find fertile ground on Europe's eastern edge for often vitriolic attacks on gays and lesbians.
Keen to make a good impression with Brussels, but wary of antagonising the church and conservative voters, the region's leaders try to steer clear of gay issues, which were taboo during communist rule.
One exception is Traian Basescu, Romania's president, who personally insisted that the Bucharest authorities open their streets to the country's first gay parade.
Vadim Tudor, a nationalist opponent of Mr Basescu, was warned by Romania's top anti-discrimination body yesterday after a rant against gays. "Homosexuals are an aberration of nature," Mr Tudor said on television at the time of the Bucharest parade.
"They shouldn't mess with me because I'm going to impale them on wooden stakes - and they might like it," he said, alluding to a punishment reputedly favoured by Romania's medieval ruler, Vlad the Impaler.