BUCHAREST - Five hundred people took part in Romania's first ever gay pride march on Saturday, walking through the streets of Bucharest under a banner proclaiming "out and proud".
A group of about 50 skinheads hurled abuse at the marchers, some of them dressed in drag, who responded to the insults by crying: "We love you."
Other counter-demonstrators included members of the Orthodox church who sang hymns and held a banner reading: "We stand for a clean world without homosexuals."
But a Protestant priest from the United States, Diane Fisher, took part in the march and told AFP: "To see a female priest stand alongside the gays of Romania gives people hope."
About 200 policemen kept watch over the event and pushed back the counter-demonstrators while urging the marchers to move along, but there were no serious incidents.
The march ended after just half an hour as heavy rain came pouring down.
The Bucharest city council initially tried to stop the event because they said they did not have enough police to maintain law and order but gave the go-ahead after an appeal from President Traian Basescu on Thursday.
The president said banning a march four years after homosexual relations were decriminalised here would set Romania "back 20 years in time", in a reference to the country's independence from Soviet control in 1989.
Florin Buhuceanu, the leader of the gay rights group Accept, said he was very pleased with the march.
"We are very happy with our first historic march, which has allowed us to show ourselves to the world in broad daylight," he told AFP.
05/28/2005 18:24 GMT