Mideast Piece

Today is the American Independence Day, and two years ago the GLBT world received a nice dose of liberty from an unlikely source:

The United Church of Christ’s rule-making body voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution endorsing same-sex marriage, making it the largest Christian denomination to do so. ”This is a significant moment,” said the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel of Cleveland, coordinator of a church coalition addressing gay and lesbian issues. She said the decision emphasized that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people are ‘’spiritual people who love and are loved by God.”

But Becker also said he doesn’t think the vote yesterday was representative of the wishes of most church members. ”If we had put it to a vote of the people in the pews, it would have failed overwhelmingly,” he said.

Some day…

- “Cairo Freeze!”

Oh Life!

On this day in 1964, Life magazine did a 14-page article titled “Homosexuality in America.” It referred to the “gay world” as sad and sordid, and presented promiscuity, leather bars, and S & M as typical of the gay experience.

It’s hard to imagine a US before “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye” and Ellen. But one did exist, and it was a much darker, more dangerous place for GLBT individuals. Just look at this text from the article:

Homosexuality shears across the spectrum of American life — the professions, the arts, business and labor. It always has. But today, especially in big cities, homosexuals are discarding their furtive ways and openly admitting, even flaunting, their deviation. Homosexuals have their own drinking places, their special assignation streets, even their own organizations. And for every obvious homosexual, there are probably nine nearly impossible to detect. This social disorder, which society tries to suppress, has forced itself into the public eye because it does present a problem — and parents especially are concerned. The myth and misconception with which homosexuality has so long been clothed must be cleared away, not to condone it but to cope with it.

A banner day for Jerusalem

It’s a march! It’s a protest!

Celebrating diversity in Jerusalem!

Ensuring democracy

Family fun - kippot, babies, and lebians!

From Ha’aretz:

They’re here, they’re queer - be proud of Israel
By Bradley Burston

JERUSALEM - I’m proud of the State of Israel. It may have more faults per capita than any nation in the world, faults which are duly broadcast, rerun, critiqued, and condemned as nowhere else. It may have more critics per capita than anywhere else in the world, in particular among its majority population of restive, instinctively kvetching, eternally disappointed Jews.

I know every criticism by heart. I’ll see your every damning denunciation, and raise you 10. But I am proud of this country, and the gay pride parade in Jerusalem goes a long way toward explaining why.

I am proud of a country which - under the burden of a 24/7 threat of Islamic Jihad terrorism, under a daily Hamas barrage of Qassam missiles on a small town in the Negev, under an explicit Iranian threat of erasure in the future and client militia brushfire wars in the near present - deploys 8,000 police, nearly half of its entire active-duty force, to protect a parade in Jerusalem by a minority group that is routinely denigrated by many members of two of the holy city’s largest and most vocal communities: the ultra-Orthodox and the Palestinians.
I am proud of the gay community, which made strenuous efforts to assure that the parade would be held in areas far from the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods and other areas where the march would serve to offend residents.

I am proud of the police for standing up to yeshiva students who, screaming “Nazis! Nazis! Nazis!” at the officers, pelted them with rocks, bottles, angle iron and Molotov cocktails, all the while breaking windows, smashing streetlights, and setting fire to tires and garbage dumpsters.

I am proud of ultra-Orthodox rabbis and yeshiva masters, who, though appalled by the parade and what they see as the abomination of homosexuality, publicly and unequivocally forbade their students from taking part in violent demonstrations.

I am proud of a country that scorns the slimy Meir Kahane disciple Itamar Ben-Gvir when he screams at gay celebrants in a Tel Aviv parade “the Nazis should have finished you off.”

I am proud of the policeman on King David Street who, when asked by a passing pre-schooler about the flag with the rainbow colors, replied, “There are boys who love boys, and girls who love girls.”

I am proud of a country in which the army’s influential radio station airs the views of the daughter of the prime minister when she states that the right of gays and lesbians to march in their capital city is as inherent as their right to vote.

Just as I am proud of Israel’s last Eurovision song contest winner, an acclaimed diva who began life as a man, who told a television interviewer why she believed that in the interest of respect for the holy city, the parade should not be held there.

And I am proud, as well, of the fact that Israel Television gave air time to a rabbi to explain his strong opposition to the march, and to the woman anchor who, asked by the rabbi what she would do if her son told her she was gay, said that she would hold him and be grateful for his openness.

There are many who argue that a Jewish country cannot countenance a public celebration of homosexuality. It is time for them to take the advice of leading rabbis, who placed this announcement in the Lithuanian Haredi newspaper, as quoted by the Jerusalem Post:

“Demonstrating should be done by each person in his place [by feeling outrage in the soul, by praying and beseeching (God) against the loathsome blasphemy].”

All of us who live here have our personal list of obscenities, perversions and abominations, as committed by our fellow Jewish residents of Israel. We may find their actions politically abhorrent, culturally unbearable, spiritually bankrupt, personally offensive.

They are a big part of the price of living in this country, riven along fault lines dividing and enraging left and right, secular and religious, Mizrachi and Ashkenazi, sabra and immigrant.

It may be the built-in flaw of a Jewish homeland, this infighting among the Jews it has brought home.

But as the gay pride parade proves, the most profound strength of a Jewish country are those Jews who strive to learn to live with the Jews with whom they so profoundly differ.

We’re here. By definition, we are all of us, each in our own ways, queer. We should, all of us for our own reasons, be proud.

Thursday’s Jerusalem Parade for Pride and Tolerance was small and mild by any standards; however, for this veteran of Pride events in New York, Montreal and elsewhere, Thursday was something far more meaningful and important than these show-stoppers.

Jerusalem is supposed to stand for the best values of the world’s oldest religions. GLBT individuals demanding rights and visibility one afternoon a year might offend the “religious” sensibilities of many people living here, but that is not the point. Women demanding the vote offended sensibilities at one point, and so did blacks living outside the system of slavery.

Jerusalem’s GLBT community must keep marching until there is no need to march anymore. It must work harder to reframe this event as an equality rally, because there are powerful (read: ultra-Orthodox) forces attempting to portray it as some kind of recruiting event or sex parade.

It took the ancient Hebrews 40 years of wandering and pain in the desert to go from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land. Considering the first shots in the modern struggle for GLBT rights were fired just in the past few decades, we can expect a similar journey. It’s necessary and dangerous, but - for many of us - sitting on the sidelines is out of the question.

Here are some of my photos from Thursday’s event; again, they’re a lot less racy than the Tel Aviv photos earlier in June, but - at least to me - a lot more special.

Below is Adam Russo, who was stabbed by a knife-wielding “yeshiva” student during Jerusalem’s Pride event two years ago.

7000 police officers to secure gay parade

Fires break out around Jerusalem
Gay pride protestors suspected of starting fires in capital, Beit Shemesh region

Shas MK proposes ‘rehab centers’ for gays

Let’s look at two developments related to the Pride rally scheduled in Jerusalem today.

This first development is that - much to my surprise - the city’s leading rabbis told their people to stop setting things on fire and throwing stones at police officers to prevent the event from taking place. This was a rare show of common sense and civic duty from the leaders of a population that - to put it diplomatically - does little for the city’s social fabric outside its own gates and spreads hate in many directions. Read more about this development here.

Unfortunately, a gay city councilor has received numerous death threats this week for publicly supporting the rally. Sa’ar Netanel is being given police protection following the threats and the posting of his telephone number on fliers taped to polls in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. It also appears in Web forums and message boards operated by sect members. Read more here.

One step forward, and another back.

From Ynet:

Some 400 Tel Aviv policemen train Wednesday for Thursday’s pride parade in Jerusalem, prepare for violence by protestors. Meanwhile, haredim continue to demonstrate against parade across country

Some 400 policemen of the Tel Aviv District police held drills Wednesday ahead of the gay pride parade, scheduled to take place in Jerusalem Thursday. The officers will join the Jerusalem police in securing the parade.

The police are taking very seriously the possibility that disturbances at the event will result in violence, and officers practiced the
use of clubs and shields in case this happens.

Meanwhile, despite an official notice published by the rabbis of the United Torah Judaism Tuesday calling on haredim not to demonstrate against the parade, violent protests ensued across Israel. Police arrested 12 haredim in Bnei Brak, including eight teens, for hurling stones at cars during the night. Two of them were later released.

Disturbances also took place at strictly-Orthodox neighborhoods in the capital, including Givat Shaul, Meah Shearim, Beit Yisrael and Bait Vagan. The Jerusalem police arrested seven people on suspicion of throwing stones and clashing with officers. Four policemen were injured in the incidents; three of them were evacuated to the hospital.