ROME - The organisers of Gay Village, a Roman summer festival dedicated to the LGBT community, have raised their security measures, following the massacre of 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando. The addition of a metal detector will be installed at the event entrance and personnel will also be conducting searches despite this being prohibited by law, Vladimir Luxuria, ex-parliamentarian and event promoter, confirms.

“We will definitely not be closing Gay Village as that would be allowing those who want us to live in fear, to win” Luxuria said on Radio Cusano. She added however that they are going ahead with the festival in a “rational and responsible” way and treating safety measures  with the upmost importance.

Luxuria, the first openly transgender member of Parliament in Europe, has given her verdict on Omar Mateen, the gunman of the Orlando shootings, saying that his actions give evidence that he is a “repressed homosexual”. She adds that, “his excessively violent reaction to two men kissing one another was as a result of wanting to kill the hidden gay within himself.”

Luxuria has expressed her wish and belief that those who responded to past attacks of such magnitude with messages of solidarity such as ‘Je suis Charlie’, do so again in this instance, writing ‘I am Gay’, in order to paint “a clear message of resistance to the homophobes around the world.”

DT