Gay Pride, Gay Marriage, and Israel: A Tale of Two Cities
In this case, it was an accurate assessment. Israel may be the “Holy Land,” but Tel Aviv’s mostly secular populace seems to fall under a disclaimer clause.
In Jerusalem — a mere hour’s drive away — the scene is radically different.
In years past, Pride parade participants who dared to march the streets of Jerusalem have been jeered and stabbed. They have also been pelted with eggs, tomatoes, and feces.
In 2006, the mere announcement by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equal rights advocacy group Jerusalem Open House of plans to parade through Jerusalem sparked weeks of unprecedented violent rioting by ultra-Orthodox demonstrators. Haredim blocked traffic, set dumpsters, tires, and trash cans ablaze, and pelted cars and police with stones. And the chief rabbinate fueled the unrest by publicly referring to Israel’s homosexuals as the “lowest of people” and urging rallies be organized to coincide with the Jerusalem march.
In 2007, police nabbed a man carrying a homemade bomb moments before the Jerusalem parade started.
All of these events easily grabbed international headlines. The cynical point out that the media are only too eager to portray Israel as closed-minded and intolerant.
Less worthy of international coverage: the situation in Tel Aviv, where Gay Pride events are part of the municipal landscape, and the city’s mayor has an advisor on gay affairs. And while Tel Aviv’s religious party council members may not like the idea of a same-sex wedding — one Shas Party councilman likened the nuptials to Sodom and Gomorrah goings-on — they strike a more conciliatory note than their Jerusalem kin. “We don’t have to make a big noise about it in public,” the Tel Aviv Shas councilman said. “We live in a democracy.”
That democracy, also applicable in Jerusalem and throughout Israel, recently led to a favorable ruling granting maternity leave benefits to same-sex partners. And a bill introduced this month proposes allowing lesbian partners to split maternity leave. In 2006, the state ruled in favor of granting same-sex couples married outside the country permission to register as married couples inside Israel.
A state-wide bill on same-sex marriage is not expected to be ratified anytime soon. The forces who have torpedoed Gay Pride events in Jerusalem are too politically powerful. If and when gays manage to expand their rights in Israel, one can be sure that the initiative will come from Tel Aviv.
Sergio , puoi farlo mettere su gai.it e gay.tv
un abbraccio,Anita
Leftards who wish Israel were wiped off the map to make way for mahoundian dreams of resurrecting their sewage caliphate/sultanate under sharia law should read this.
There’s no other country in the Middle East where people who are openly gay enjoy such rights. On the contrary, homosexuality is considered a “crime” often punishable by death in all mahoundian countries surrounding Israel, despite the hard fact that Arabs are extremely hypocritical in their homophobia, as the article “The Kingdom in the Closet – Gay Saudi Arabia” and Quran 76:19 can attest.
I wonder if any of the usual commenters who oppose equality for homosexuals in the U.S. will object to the violent rioting, stabbings and destruction of property by the ultra-religious in Israel done in the name of opposing equality for homosexuals described in this piece. They were pretty angry about the demonstrations by gays after Prop. 8 was passed in California due to activism against their equality by a coalition of religions. So, was their outrage about ANY violent protest? Or will they give silent approval to ones that seek to crush equality for people of whom they disapprove?
Israeli politics is stranger than most Yankees can imagine. These ultra-orthodox parties are a pox on the nation; they’re not Zionists, and are immune from the draft. They’re freeloaders. OTOH, Tel Aviv isn’t exactly a center of Zionism, either. It’s so left-wing, many are actively supporting Hamas.
Both, each in their own way, represent a threat to the survival of Israel. Neither should be held up as an example of the nation.
Having lived in Tel Aviv for several years, I can personally attest to the freedoms and acceptance that gays have in Israel. Arabs and Jews marched together during the parades, (some coming from the Palestinian territories as was reported in the Jerusalem Post) oberservers were religious and non-religious, straight and gay. It was festive and open and without fear. I worked with 3 lesbians. Their partners were invited to all our work functions and vacations. When I read about those homosexuals in the West supporting Israeli boycotts and jumping on the pro-Moslem wagon, it makes my blood boil. I dare them to step one foot in any Arab country as an open-gay. Of course, it’s easy to critcize from the safety of your own backyard.
Nonetheless, the protections accorded by the law are no match to the price paid by those who line up with the inferior choice to communicate the reality that men and women are different, and this is the case because there is more involved than men and women.
Call it a carry-over from the “Possessor vs. Non-Possessor” debate in Russia after the successful overthrow of the Mongol yoke.
For the non-possessors steadfastly upheld the ban
of using the civil arm to punish what falls short
of the universal standard.
In Israel, Gay Pride Month’s main attraction was an unprecedented and provocative public marriage ceremony joining five same-sex couples in civil matrimony.
I assume five “opposite marriages” collapsed as a result of this vicious attack.
Does anyone, besides me, read the Bible anymore?
we use it to clean our anus each day. Lies and ignorance and fairy tales from an age of superstition and ignorance.
that has killed more people then any other book in history, including Mein Kampf.
I would say give the west bank to the orthodox. And then give it to the Palestinians. they deserve each other.
the filth of the orthodox against gays. the orthodox who manage to forget that their very close relatives shared hitlers ovens with the gays, another group that maniac hated.
In early 2009 a couple of orthodox members of the knesset said “gays were like bird flu” A call for geneocide.
MY wife was at that time planning a trip to Israel with her temple> I refused to go and instead gave the $5000 to a gay rights group, saying that in israel something terrible would happen.
Tw0 weeks after my wife returned in late June 09, an orthodox walked into the lgbt center in Tel Aviv and killed two and wounded 9,including two paralyzed for life.
Until Israel takes the orthodox filth and sends them to hell, I am proud that I am no longer Jewish and the same re all of our children.
One would think Israelis would be different but conservatives of virtually every religiion are the criminals of the world.
This one I totally fail to understand about the right — getting married and committing to a lifelong relationship are conservative values, instead, the right acts like the left here and vice versa.
Do people think that if they prevent gays from having a normal life that they’ll turn straight? Or is there some kind of revenge going on here?
It just does not make sense for the right to go against conservative core values and maybe one day someone will explain this complete irrationality here.
(remember, it’s the liberals who is against people forming life-long bonds out of principle… Oh well, there is nowt queerer than folks as they say!)
8. Marilyn
Yes.
#9 RightWingHippyChick – I don’t care if they want to commit themselves in a gross parody of traditional nuptials. I think they should have all the rights of any civil contract available to others as a matter of equal access to the law.
However, I don’t want it to be called marriage. Marriage is a load-bearing beam of our society. It is necessary to the proper upbringing of our children. The fact that marriage has become so dispensable has contributed greatly to the decay of our society. As marriage rates go down, and divorces go up, our society becomes more dysfunctional in direct relation.
So, we must build back up the value of marriage in our society to arrest the decline. We need to exalt it. People need to treat it as truly valuable. Couples need to work to make it work. We need to honor those who have held together marriages for long periods of time, so that they’ll be less likely to abandon such status.
With that premise, I say we cannot afford to water down the issue by allowing gay marriage. I want my kids to grow up seeing marriage as one thing, not as some morally equivalent thing. I want the example set properly. One can talk all one wants, but it is the deeds which children see. Men and women get married and stay married. That is the norm I want them to see and emulate. I want this to be their reality. Our society depends upon it.
Marc, marriage as an institution was dead the moment we allowed divorce to be legal — the game theory calculation changed drastically and it no longer is paramount to ‘get along’ with your spouse – if the current one is ‘broken’ you can just discard and fish for a new one, better luck next time! Frankly, modern marriage is not real marriage since it’s been downgraded to be a more involved engagement that can be canceled like a bad purchase.
And that is the real problem we have, the nature of the commitment has changed fundamentally and was broken at the core, long before gays even we legalised.
So, I’m not understanding why promoting marriage (or the sorry construct that is called this nowadays) undermines the little that is left of the institution, if anything gays marrying saves the taxpayer lots of money, ensures they have someone to look after them in their old age and settles them down too. In other words, marriage(or however you want to call this particular commitment) helps everyone, straight or gay and society in general.
I don’t think it’s good for kids to grow up seeing people who never bond and who are not allowed to either officially — and that broken legal structure that passes for marriage nowadays is not a good example of real marriage either: in other words, an unmarried gay couple who have been devoted to each other for 20 years are a far better example for all of us than people who nip down to Vegas for yet another marriage every 2-3 years, a ‘married’ woman whose kids are all fatherless half-siblings is a disaster for us all.
True gays don’t bring up kids, but there are plenty of childfree marriages, and no-one thinks that those people are not really married.
I personally like to see people to marry and to stay with each other so they can evolve into the full human being they should be, regardless of their sexuality, because people who have bonded with a partner properly are much nicer to have around and they are the folks in this world who usually take the adult role in life and get things done.
thank you
thank you also
#5, Toronto Girl:
If it makes you feel any better, I am a staunch supporter of Israel and have been all my life.
The second I knew about Obama’s Muslim upbringing and current involvement with anti-Israel Muslims (are there any other kind? I don’t know) I knew I could never support his candidacy because he would never support equality for gays in any practical way.
Another thing that led me to conservatism was all the research I had to do about Obama in the fall of 2008 for an e-mail discusssion I had with a Jewish friend who was passionately committed to Obama — while I was passionately committed to McCain/Palin from the moment McCain announced Gov. Palin as his VP choice. I carefully researched all of Obama’s anti-Israel positions and allies and friends and sent my friend links so she could see for herself how bad an Obama presidency would be for Israel and all Jews, but she remained devoted to Obama to a level that I finally regarded as crazy and in January I dropped the friendship. I cannot fathom how 80 percent of American Jews sold out Israel by voting for Obama.
sounds like youve been watching the jew hater Glenn Beck.
The government should get out of the marriage business. You don’t need a license to have children and you shouldn’t need one to get married. Prior to the Civil War people were just married in their church of choice.
You shouldn’t need government approval for your choice of marriage partner (or partners if you’re inclined to polygamy). It’s the state sticking its nose into the private affairs of its citizens.
Cynthia;
Kosovar, Bosnian, and Albanian Muslims are actually quite pro-Isreal, seeing themselves in a similar position. Also, Kurds see the whole Arab-Isreali conflict as an ethnic issue, not one of religion. They’re not on the Arab side, of course.