The mayor of Colombia’s capital Bogota, Gustavo Petro, is promoting gender tolerance through this week’s celebration of “Sexual Diversity and Gender Identity.”
Starting Thursday Bogota’s District Department of Social Integration (SDIS) with Mayor Petro’s support, will be hosting the week-long event under the slogan “Be you, be with me.”
The event is through an entity called “For a Bogota without Closets,” where members of SDIS promote non-discrimination and recognize the rights of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community.
The overall intention of the celebration is to eradicate discrimination against the LGBT community because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and “guarantee their right to work in conditions of equality and equity,” newspaper El Espectador reported.
According to news site Terra, “For a Bogota without Closets” released a statement saying that, “this week is a commitment by the city to create a space in which they [LGBT] are recognized, men and women, as having a valuable knowledge, so that we give them a place and an opportunity.”
Bogota is a city in which allegedly 20% of the community believes that LGBT are “a risk to the community,” according to El Espectador. Homosexuality was even a crime in Colombia, punishable by imprisonment, until 1980.
