Whatever sympathy I might have had for Christianist opposition to a gay pride parade in Jerusalem (and admittedly, it was pretty small to begin with), evaporated when the FRC characterized it as an "abomination in the city of Christ."
Oh, please. Israel is the Jewish state, and while completely respect the rights of the Christian minority there to worship as they please, don't pretend like Israel as an obligation to accede to Christian dogma. Ironically, virtually all the "pressure" the FRC cites against the march comes from external sources--the Vatican and foreign ministries. The local Jewish population, by and large, is okay with it--and the Israeli Attorney General ruled the parade can go through. So really, this is just Christians demanding that Jews subsume their own beliefs on what constitutes acceptable practice in our holiest city under their intolerance. Oh, and if Christians seriously do want to persuade us to act in their interests, don't refer to our holiest city as "the city of Christ."
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Funny how the world can seem totally different depending on which sources you read.
Here's what I saw. From what I can tell, it's not just Christians that are pissed.
An unknown extremist Jewish group pasted up signs announcing a $500 "reward" for every gay man or woman killed during the parade, which is scheduled for Nov. 10. Several ultra-orthodox rabbis have vowed to mobilize more than 100,000 protesters to shut down Jerusalem on the day of the parade, and police warn that some groups plan to pelt the marchers with apples jagged with razor blades... In the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shea'rim, police clashed over three consecutive nights this week with curly-forelocked youths who burned tires and hurled eggs and tomatoes. One officer said he was stunned "by the level of hatred" he saw in these clashes against Israel's small but vocal gay and lesbian community... The anti-gay bandwagon has even attracted support from abroad. Rabbi Yehuda Levin, of the Orthodox Rabbinical Alliance of America and the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada, has been carrying out a three-year campaign against what he calls "the homosexualization of the Holy Land." It was Levin who crossed the boundaries of religious and ethnic hostility and recruited the support of prominent Palestinian Islamic cleric Taisser Tamimi against the parade.
Time has a rather interesting headline for this piece.
Hatred (of Gays) Unites Jerusalem's Feuding Faiths
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1554629,00.html
So many diffrent groups working together towards a common goal... it just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
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