Mideast Piece

Gotta love Israeli music!

It’s hard to remember a time in the US when there were no “public” gays a la Ellen and Rosie and the “Queer Eye” guys; however, we should remember that “coming out” has always been costly and it’s only recently that public figures have come out of the closet. Twenty-four years ago today, Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA) came out, making him the first member of Congress to do so.

We can only imagine how many dozens of Congressmen and Congresswomen before him pitched for our team, right? Here’s to Gerry (pictured here) for helping to pave the way!

P.S. - We should mention what Studds is also well-known for - a consensual affair with a 17-year-old page that earned him the censoring of the House of Representatives. It was the discovery of this affair that prompted Studds to come out. Oh well.

- “Cairo Freeze!”

- “Cairo Freeze!”

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!”

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.

I recently came across “Cairo Freeze!” by T. Shahin, an Egyptian freelance editorial cartoonist. His cartoons are often connected to human rights in the region, including the status of GLBT individuals.

Over the next couple of weeks I will run a few of his cartoons and - ongoing - keep an eye open for anything GLBT-related. Enjoy!