Wednesday 11 May 2011

Gay couple file complaint after they were ejected from April Fair in Sevilla

SEVILLA (Agencies) A couple have made a formal complaint to police in Seville after they were stopped from dancing together at the city's yearly April Fair (Feria de Abril), on the basis that they were gay.José Carlos Iglesias and Juan Carlos Cabezas were stopped by a married couple from dancing traditional sevillanas together in one of the many casetas (marquees) that host the festivities. According to Iglesias, aged 31, when the woman realized that the couple were gay, "she ordered the group that was playing music to stop," and then alerted her husband, who was the "president" of the particular tent. According to the complaint, the married couple then approached the gay men, and told them "they could not dance, that they were in a respectable caseta, and that two men could not dance together." The men were then invited to leave the tent, "on the basis that it was private property."
This is the second year running that such an incident has taken place at the Seville Fair, after a gay couple were also discriminated against in 2010 after they kissed one another. Discrimination on grounds of gender is illegal in Spain.
 

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