About two hundred gay activists marched peacefully, carrying banners reading “Let’s Love Each Other” or “This is Just Beginning,” demanding equal rights for sexual minorities and respect for basic human rights.

No incidents were reported, unlike in previous years when police clashed with hundreds of right-wing extremists and gay activists had to be evacuated.

Under the slogan “Traditionally proud”, gay activist hit the streets supported by number colleagues from Serbia, Albania, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Montenegrin society today is a “little bit more mature”, LGBT activist and parade orgaiser Danijel Kalezic said.

Thanking the police for protection, Kalezic welcomed all those in Montenegro who were not afraid to come out to the streets and joined the parade.

“Today I am the happiest man in the world,” he said and announced the next gay march for October 2015.

Podgorica Pride was supported by a number of representatives of the international community in Montenegro, civil society activists and journalists.

The head of the EU Delegation in Podgorica Mitja Drobnic said that it is not easy for human rights defenders in Montenegro and congratulated activists for their courage.

Gay activists walked the same route as last year after police estimated that the 1,400-foot-long trail in the centre of Podgorica was easiest to secure. Some 1,800 officers, almost half the country’s active police force, were deployed in five rings of security in the area near the former government headquarters.

On Friday, Montenegrin President Filip Vujanovic said the parade would show that Montenegrin society respected the right to diversity and that the state was determined to protect that right.

During the first Pride march in Montenegro, last October, more than 500 protesters, mostly football hooligans, hurled rocks and bottles in an attempt to disrupt the march by several dozen gay activists.

Twenty police were injured, one of them seriously. Among the 60 people detained, a third were youngsters under 18.

While the government is fully behind the march, calls for tolerance and warnings of possible prosection have not stopped anti-gay activists from daubing offensive graffiti on walls near the parade.

A number of infomal Facebook groups have also called on people to stop the gay activists from holding a march.

Organizers said they did not feel intimidated, because the police promptly responded to violence during last year’s event.

The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, the most powerful religiuous community in the country, remains bitterly opposed to the march – and to gay rights in general.

A week ahead of the parade, its leading bishop, Metropolitan Amfilohije, called the march “a parade of death and self-destruction.”

Because of these and similar statements, Bishop Amfilohije was declared “homophobe of the year” at the Pride Parade.

The Serbian Church’s views cut little ice with the country’s pro-Western government, or with EU dipomats in the country, however.

The government has taken a forward position on gay rights, in spite of the fact that the issue is controversial and unpopular in what remains a conservative and patriarchal society.

Surveys show that about 70 per cent of Montenegrins still consider homosexuality an illness. Around 80 per cent believe gay people should keep their sexuality private.

Danijel Kalezic rejected claims that the symbol of this year’s parade – a moustache – was a deliberate insult to the country’s traditional pride in masculine virtues.

“In Montenegro the moustache is a symbol of courage, respect, bravery, pride… It belongs to us in the LGBT community, too, not just to the other Montenegro,” he said.