Not even the heavy rain could damp­en T&T’s sec­ond an­nu­al gay pride pa­rade held at Nel­son Man­dela Park, St Clair yes­ter­day.

Young and old came out to par­take in a va­ri­ety of ac­tiv­i­ties while oth­ers sim­ply showed their sup­port for the event themed, “Eq­ui­ty and equal­i­ty for all.”

Co-or­di­na­tor of the T&T Pride Arts Fes­ti­val Rudolph Hanamji ex­plained this year was ded­i­cat­ed to the trans com­mu­ni­ty which re­mains the most vul­ner­a­ble sec­tion of the LGBTQI.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so com­mem­o­rat­ed the an­niver­sary of the Stonewall up­ris­ing which took place 50 years ago and gal­va­nized the mod­ern gay rights move­ment.

“Al­though on­ly in its sec­ond year, the event has grown by leaps and bounds. We have close to a 30 per cent up­take on every ac­tiv­i­ty this year,” Hanamji said.

He not­ed that while more peo­ple have been com­fort­able to open­ly de­clare their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, some gays were still ill-treat­ed by so­ci­ety.

“T&T has al­ways been a lot more tol­er­ant so­ci­ety than oth­ers but there’s a lot of abuse and vi­o­lence still tak­ing place as well as ho­mo­pho­bia es­pe­cial­ly from some mem­bers of cer­tain re­li­gious groups,” Hanamji said.

Brandy Ro­driguez, Pres­i­dent at T&T Trans­gen­der Coali­tion who al­so spoke said strides have been made to ad­dress gen­der-based vi­o­lence.

“There is growth and there is room for more. It’s not where we want to be at this time but we are quite sat­is­fied in terms of where the growth is...we are see­ing where peo­ple are will­ing to hear us.

“Even po­lice of­fi­cers are will­ing to hear what’s go­ing on. It wasn’t like that in the last decade,” Ro­driguez said.

Eva Chavez, head of Women’s Cau­cus not­ed more mem­bers of the LGBTQI have been find­ing the courage to re­port crimes met­ed out against them.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith was al­so praised for his ef­forts in as­sist­ing the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty not on­ly or­gan­ise yes­ter­day’s pa­rade but al­so for help­ing pave the way for­ward.

“Pride TT made his­to­ry this year as it was the first time we meet with a po­lice com­mis­sion­er and we con­tin­ue to look for­ward to his sup­port.

“He as­sured us about a safe pride and mov­ing for­ward no dis­crim­i­na­tion against us,” Chavez added.

How­ev­er, there were a cou­ple of de­trac­tors at yes­ter­day’s event.

Shel­don Matthews who stood at the en­trance with a plac­ard de­nounc­ing ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty said he want­ed to pro­claim the word of God.

“I want the gays to know God loves them but he hates their in­volve­ment in ho­mo be­hav­iour,” Matthews added.