Brighton lesbian Clare Dimyon was presented with an MBE by Prince Charles at an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, last week.
On Friday, 29 October, Clare Dimyon, 45, was honoured for her “services to promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Central and Eastern Europe”. The honour is a historic first for Pride.
A party of three lesbians of three generations, from Britain, Poland and Hungary accompanied Clare to Buckingham Palace. One of them, Gaby Charing, a 66 year old lawyer exclaimed: “I never thought I’d live to hear the Lord Chamberlain utter the words 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender' inside Buckingham Palace. I remember his office censoring homosexual plays in the sixties.”
Dimyon’s first parade was in London 25 years ago. She was first inspired to take part in Pride parades in Central and Eastern Europe following the events of Riga Pride 2006 and the banned Warsaw Pride of 2005.
Since then she has participated in parades throughout the former Soviet bloc. In 2009, she created the Solidarity Tour, visiting each one in turn, to draw attention to emerging LGBT communities in Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Macedonia, the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
She was most recently at Belgrade Pride where she witnessed how the Serbian authorities successfully protected participants from violent hooliganism.
Clare has been instrumental in increasing the number of countries whose embassies routinely support the human rights of gay people from seven in 2007 to twenty two in 2010. This year alone saw the first ever PRIDE marches in Vilnius and Bratislava, both with significant support from the diplomatic community, British ambassadors have attended PRIDE parades in Vilnius, Bucharest, Budapest, Bratislava and the historic Warsaw EuroPRIDE parade held on 17 July in Poland.
Clare says: “The ambassador in Nepal attended the first Kathmandu PRIDE and I hadn’t even asked! However I do not think any of this would have happened were it not for the support of Caroline Lucas now MP for (Brighton Pavilion) who recommended my ideas to the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office).”