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Like a sore throat where the pain keeps shifting around, anti-gay attacks during this season's pride celebrations struck -- and didn't strike -- in unexpected places.

A pride march went off with official approval and without major incident in Warsaw where a few years ago it had been banned and attacked. In Moscow, Bucharest, and Riga gay pride events occurred in relative peace -- if not without counter-protests -- where previously there had been pitched battles and arrests.

However marchers in Sofia's first gay pride parade faced far-right counter demonstrators who threw bottles, rocks, and Molotov cocktails -- though without reported injuries.

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ould-be marchers in Moldova's capital Chisinau were kept from demonstrating by an anti-gay mob that seized banners from would-be pride celebrants arriving on a bus. And once again this year, mayoral diktat kept any pride event from getting underway in Lithuania's capital Vilnius -- despite condemnation of the municipality's homophobia in April by the Council of Europe.

The paprika's too hot

But the surprise this season was the right-wing violence in two of Eastern Europe's most liberal countries: against gay pride in Budapest and against the Czech Republic's first-ever such march, in the city of Brno.

Though Hungary's National Assembly voted to officially register same-sex couples as of 2009, this year's gay pride parade on June 28 in Budapest won't be remembered as a celebration.

Marchers faced hundreds of right-wing extremists, who pelted the pro-gay demonstrators with eggs, bottles, and firecrackers. A rock went through the window of a police car carrying Socialist European MP, who wasn't hurt. Leading Liberal politician Gabor Horn was also attacked. Some 45 rightists were detained.

At last year's Budapest pride, marchers were pelted with eggs, and Amnesty International critcized Hungary for its failure to protect a peaceful demonstration. This year riot police were out in force, with tear gas and water cannons. Two police were among the eight reported wounded. But authorities treated only as "vandalism" a firebombing of the Budapest gay bar Action the day before pride -- an attack which set curtains in the bar's front room ablaze, though with no injuries.

"Vandalism is when you spray paint on a wall," said Gábor Kuszing of the Association of People Challenging Patriarchy. "Throwing a petrol bomb into a bar with people in it is attempted murder."

Checkered debut

In Brno on June 28, the Czech Republic's first-ever pride march faced an assault by dozens of neo-Nazis that left 20 of the 500 gay demonstrators injured. Police and the extremists clashed for some 45 minutes at the end of the parade route, and some 15 were arrested.

Does the greater tolerance evident in this year's somewhat more peaceful prides in Moscow, Warsaw, and Bucharest meant that anti-gay sore spot is shifting Westward?

Not necessarily, says Karl Anderson, editor of the Prague-based gay magazine Destroyer, who contends this year's violence in the Czech Republic and Hungary doesn't have deep roots.

"Unlike what had happened in Poland and Russia, the parade wasn't attacked by regular citizens, but by extremists," Anderson says. "These countries have a tradition of being open-minded and secularized. The attacks don't reflect attitudes at large."

Author Profile:  Bill Andriette
Bill Andriette is features editor of The Guide
Email:	theguide@guidemag.com