Mideast Piece

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.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 6:09 am and is filed under Events, Photos, Human Rights, GLBTQ, News, Health, Gay, Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.