The gay pride parade, which is scheduled to take place in the Bulgarian capital Sofia at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, is going to have yet another route.

The parade was initially supposed to start at the National Palace of culture and to proceed down the Vitosha Blvd. Then, in order to guarantee the security of the participants, the Mayor Boyko Borisov changed its location to the Southern Park in Sofia.

Finally late on Friday the new route for the procession was agreed upon by the Mayor and the organizers. The parade is to start at the National Palace of Culture, and will proceed down Evlogi Georgiev Blvd, the Gurko Blvd, the Vasil Levski Blvd, and Graf Ignatiev Blvd to the Center for Culture and Debate on Lyuben Karavelov Street.

The Sofia Municipality announced that the above boulevards and streets would not be closed for the event.

"All European capitals have allowed such events. Everyone has a right of choice", the Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov said. He was repeatedly asked to cancel the parade.

Over the last week a number of extremist and rightist parties and organizations, and religions institutions declared themselves against the gay parade, including the Bulgarian National Union of Boyan Rasate, the Ataka party, and the VMRO party, as well as the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church in Bulgaria, and the Head Mufti's Office.

The parade will be guarded by the police as rightist extremists and football hooligans are expected to try to provoke or attack the participants.

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