(JTA) — Approximately 200,000 people, including many tourists, gathered in central Tel Aviv for the city’s 23rd gay pride event.

The event, whose theme this year is women in the gay, lesbian and transsexual community, kicked off Friday morning at Gan Meir, a park that houses the Tel Aviv Gay Center. A representative of the center presented an award to journalist Ilana Dayan and to Ilana Shirazi, an organizer of lesbian marriage ceremonies.

Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai then gave the signal for the Gay Pride Parade, which features a procession with floats and music terminating at a beach party in south Tel Aviv.

Among the first-time foreign participants this year in the parade is Buck Angel, an transsexual male adult film producer, actor and motivational speaker from California who was born a woman. “This is my first time in this side of the world,” he told Ynet. “It’s exciting to see the gay community being accepted in the Middle East and it’s generating change.”

Elsewhere in the region, homosexuals and men especially are subject to legal persecution. Countless homosexuals have been murdered in the region, where their sexual orientations are considered irreverent.

Homosexuality used to be illegal in Israel, too, because it was proscribed in the British penal code, which the Jewish state largely took over after the end of the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948. But in 1953, the state attorney’s office issued a directive to police not to implement laws against homosexuals until they were formally abolished in 1988.

Six years later, the Israel Supreme Court ruled that discrimination between heterosexual couples and homosexual ones in terms of benefits from the state and employers was illegal, paving the way to recognition of life partnerships between gay and lesbian spouses. In 1997, the court ruled that the  Israel Defense Forces must recognize same-sex spouses of deceased staff as widows.

Another precedent-setting ruling came in 2006, when the court ruled that the state must recognize same-sex marriages performed in or registered by countries where such unions are recognized.

Same-sex marriages are not performed in Israel, where marital issues are the purview of the Chief Rabbinate for Jews, and corresponding religious bodies for Muslims and Christians.

In 2005, a Jewish religious fanatic stabbed several people at the Jerusalem gay pride parade. The assailant, Yishai Schilssel, was convicted of attempted murder. In 2015, shortly after his release, he again stabbed victims at that year’s gay pride parade in Jerusalem, killing a 16-year-old participant and wounding several others.

Despite these incidents, violence against homosexuals is relatively rare in Israel, which is rated by many publications for the gay community as one of the world’s best and safest travel destinations.

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