No place for hate, says Pride Cymru after Cardiff protest

It happened during the first Pride march in Cardiff since 2019

Pride Cymru has said there is "no place for hate" after protesters interrupted an LGBTQ+ march in Cardiff.

A video emerged on social media showing police asking a group to leave for safety reasons on Saturday.

South Wales Police said no arrests were made after a "small protest group" had "assembled themselves on the route to block the procession".

Protest organisers Get The L Out were carrying banners, including one which read "transactivism erases lesbians".

On its website, Get The L Out describes itself as a "grassroots lesbian feminist activist group".

Co-founder Angela Wild told BBC Wales the group had organised a march with Merched Cymru, Wales Women's Rights Network and the LGB Alliance for the rights of same-sex attracted women.

"It seems like same-sex attraction is now becoming a hate crime," Ms Wild said. "We went to Pride to say this is wrong, and we got removed."

Pride organisers said the group was "drowned out by shouts of solidarity from the community and spectators".

"There is no place for hate at Pride. And as our parade said today loudly and clearly 'trans rights are human rights'," said Gian Molinu, chair of Pride Cymru, in a tweet posted by the organisation on Saturday evening.

The force said officers had explained to the group why they "needed to move, provided guidance about protesting lawfully and offered to facilitate a lawful protest".

"The group was cooperative and left the area shortly after," it said.

Hannah Blythyn, Deputy Minister for Social Partnership, tweeted: "There can be no place for hate - we stand together with and within the LGBTQ+ community."

A spokesperson for Pride Cymru said: "Everyone involved in the parade needs to register in advance, to ensure we can keep everybody safe.

"This group interrupted the parade two-thirds of the way into the route, they were not part of the march, they had not registered so were not entitled to be there. South Wales Police moved them on."

Ms Wild said the group did not try to register to participate in the Pride parade because they felt they would have been rejected after some members of the LGBT community labelled their position transphobic.

"The needs of lesbians are in direct contradiction with men who identify as women," she added.

"As soon as lesbians say that, we get called transphobic and we need to open a discussion on that as a start."