Israel's chief
rabbis joined Christian and Muslim clerics in a rare
alliance to protest plans to hold an international gay
festival in Jerusalem this summer. The 10-day WorldPride
festival, last held in Rome in 2000, is to include street
parties, workshops, and a gay film festival. Jerusalem's
ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor, Uri Lupolianski, says he is
powerless to interfere, as public events are licensed by the
police, not city hall. Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel
Ben-Ruby said Thursday that police had received a number of
requests not to issue a permit for the festival but had not
yet made a decision.
At a news conference Wednesday, Yona Metzger, one of
the chief rabbis, pleaded with the festival's organizers to
take it elsewhere. "Please do not damage the holiness of
Jerusalem," he said. "Preserve its character, preserve its
peace...cancel your plans." Metzger was joined at the news
conference by Rabbi Shlomo Amar, Latin patriarch Michel
Sabbah, and other Christian and Muslim officials in
demanding the event be canceled.
Opposition to the event has forged some unusual
alliances. Earlier this month evangelical Christians and
rabbis from the United States joined forces with
ultra-Orthodox Israeli Jews to warn that holding the
festival in Jerusalem could provoke divine retribution along
the lines of the biblical story of the destruction of Sodom
and Gomorrah. Muslim cleric Abdel-Salem Menasra repeated
that warning on Wednesday. "God destroyed those cities and
everyone in them," he said. "I'm warning everybody, God will
destroy Jerusalem together with the Jews, the Christians,
and the Muslims."
Some participants at the news conference described
gays as lower than animals, while others described their
lifestyle as unnatural and unhealthy. Jerusalem Open House
director Hagai El-Ad, one of the festival organizers, told
the Associated Press that the offensive tone of the remarks
made him more determined than ever to press ahead with plans
for the August 18-28 event. "If anyone had any hesitation
about how important this event is then after the unfortunate
remarks made at Wednesday's press conference, I think no
such questions remain," he said. "It's important that one of
the first signs of interfaith dialogue we have encountered
here in Jerusalem takes place around such a negative message."
A statement from the Jerusalem Open House said it was
vital to hold the event in such a contentious locale. "The
first WorldPride, Rome 2000, brought to the heart of Europe,
and indeed to the pope's doorstep, the message that gays and
lesbians are and always have been a vital part of humanity,"
according to the statement on the group's Web site. "It is
time to demonstrate to our community, to our neighbors and
peers, and indeed to the world not only that we belong but
that our love and our pride can cross the harshest borders
that divide people."
In the past, Israeli gays have held small marches in
Jerusalem that have passed relatively peacefully, with a few
shouted insults from onlookers and minor acts of vandalism.
The Rome event attracted tens of thousands of participants.
Organizers of the festival, under the theme "Love Without
Borders," say they want to promote coexistence. A majority
of Jerusalem's more than 600,000 residents are either
Orthodox Jews or Muslim or Christian Palestinians,
traditional communities that oppose homosexuality. Clerics
at Wednesday's conference said they would form a joint
committee to lobby politicians and police to prevent the
festival. (AP)
