The centerpiece of the first-ever Pride celebrations in Vilnius, Lithuania, was canceled May 23 after city officials refused to authorize it.

Organizers had planned to display a 30-meter rainbow flag in Savivaldybes Square, accompanied by the European Union’s (EU) traveling “anti-discrimination truck.”

But Mayor Juozas Imbrasas banned the truck from entering the city, and the City Council refused to issue a permit for the rally, saying it was likely to provoke anti-gay riots.

“We will not do the rainbow flag display in the central square, since we haven’t got a permit and we have to respect the decision,” Virginija Prasmickaite of the Lithuanian Gay League said in an e-mail. “Also, due to security reasons, we will encourage everyone not to make any [public] actions. The city is full of anti-gay leaflets calling upon [people] to demonstrate against gay propaganda.”

The blocking of the EU’s anti-discrimination truck, which has been roaming 19 nations for four years, was a first for the vehicle.

“This is an appalling act of disrespect … toward the entire European Union and its basic principles,” said Patricia Prendiville, head of the European branch of the International Lesbian and Gay Association.

Sophie in ’t Veld, vice president of the European Parliament’s Intergroup on Gay and Lesbian Rights, called on the European Commission to take decisive action.

“The commission does not hesitate to charge in with the cavalry to fight cartels or anti-competitive practices,” she said. “In the ‘European Year of Equal Opportunities,’ the commission must demonstrate that it enforces all European laws, not just the economic ones. Banning a peaceful demonstration [has been] ruled illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.”

Mayor Imbrasas also prohibited Pride ads from appearing on the city’s public-transportation vehicles.

The large ads, designed to fill the side or back of a city trolley bus, read: “A lesbian can work at school,” “A gay man can serve in the police force” and “Homosexual employees have a right to be open and safe.”

Imbrasas declared, “With priority for the traditional family and seeking to promote family values, we disapprove the public display of homosexualists’ ideas in the city of Vilnius.”

The ads – produced and placed with around $8,000 in EU and Lithuanian government funding – also never saw the light of day in the city of Kaunas.

After the ads were installed on trolley buses there, drivers refused to leave the trolley barn, saying they feared they would be mocked by friends and that the vehicles would be vandalized.

Other pride events in Vilnius went ahead as planned, organizers said. They included a cultural exhibition, film screenings, a seminar and a dance party.

Warsaw’s Pride parade went relatively smoothly this year, as a record 20,000 people marched through downtown under heavy police protection May 19.

A few dozen members of a far-right youth group protested the parade and five of them were arrested, police said. In some previous years, the parade has been banned by city officials and violently attacked by anti-gay protesters.

Activists from around the continent joined the march, including Sweden’s European Affairs Minister Cecilia Malmström, German MPs Claudia Roth and Volker Beck, and Madrid City Councilor Pedro Zerolo.

The parade took place 16 days after the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously that then-Mayor Lech Kaczynski violated the European Convention on Human Rights when he banned the 2005 march. Kaczynski, who is now Poland’s president, had said he opposed “propagating gay orientation.”

Current Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, who defeated Kaczynski’s right-wing Law and Justice party in the November 2006 mayoral election, is more gay friendly.

One day after the parade, conservative groups staged a march of their own in support of families and in opposition to abortion and gay rights.

One of the 800 marchers, Deputy Prime Minister Roman Giertych, told reporters: “One has to oppose what happened here yesterday. Revolting pederasts came here from many countries and tried to impose their propaganda on us.”

Famous South Korean transgender singer and actress Harisu married her boyfriend, rap singer Micky Chung, May 19 in Seoul.

Harisu, 32, had a sex-change operation in the late 1990s and was legally recognized as female in a 2002 district court ruling. She and Chung, 27, met on the Internet in 2005.

“I’ll become a housewife who cooks well and is sexy and caring,” she told journalists before the wedding.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled definitively that postoperative transsexuals can change their gender designation in the government’s all-important family registry.

“A person’s mental and social gender, which he or she did not recognize at birth, can be found during his or her social life,” the court said.

Before changing a record, bureaucrats must confirm that the person felt he or she belonged to the other sex throughout adulthood, has undergone counseling and surgery, is living biologically and socially as a member of the new gender, and is recognized as such by family and friends.

Amnesty International has called for the release of 17 men jailed in Iran on charges of “homosexual conduct” and drinking alcohol.

The men, who reportedly were dressed in women’s clothing at the time of their arrests, were among 87 people detained in a May 10 raid on a private party in Esfahán.

All 87 were severely beaten by police and Basiji militia members during the raid and there have been reports the 17 are being tortured in jail.

They are not believed to have had access to lawyers or family since their arrests.

The other detainees were released but, according to Amnesty, are likely to face prosecution in the future.

Amnesty described the raid as part of a mounting security operation to enforce Islamic dress codes during an annual crackdown on “immoral behavior.”

Assistance: Bill Kelley