Time: 10:46 AM,Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Preparations for Int'l Homosexual Event in Jerusalem Under Way
By Julie Stahl
CNSNews.com Jerusalem Bureau Chief
April 04, 2006
Jerusalem (CNSNews.com) - An international homosexual event that was postponed last year is now scheduled to be held this summer in Jerusalem. Preparations are well under way, one of the event organizers said on Tuesday.
InterPride, the International Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered (LGBT) Pride Coordinators, decided in 2003 to hold WorldPride 2005 in Jerusalem -- a city sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims.
But the event was postponed last year because of Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements, which was scheduled to take place at about the same time.
The event is now set to take place in August, and it has been shortened from 10 days to a week. It includes various cultural events as well as a public rally and march through the streets of Jerusalem.
The postponement gave local organizers a "second chance" to condense their program and make it more economically feasible for people to attend, said Haggai El-Ad, executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance (JOH), the city's LGBT center and the local sponsors of the event.
"The decision to reschedule won public respect," said El-Ad, because the group took into consideration the "extremely unique circumstances" involved in the disengagement.
El-Ad said people attending the event do not need to register, but JOH is expecting "many thousands" of people to attend.
This will be the second event of its kind. The first WorldPride gathering took place in Rome in 2000, when the Vatican was celebrating the second millennium since Jesus' birth.
Critics of the event have charged that it is being held in Jerusalem purposely to offend the religious sensibilities of the city's residents as well as Jews, Christians and Muslims throughout the world. Strict adherents to those three religions reject homosexual behavior.
But organizers said on their website that the event is intended to "bring a new focus to an ancient city through a massive demonstration of LGBT dignity, pride, and boundary-crossing celebration.
"In these times of intolerance and suspicion, from the home of three of the world's great religions, we will proclaim the love that knows no borders," the website said.
Religious leaders protested plans to hold the event last year, before it was postponed. Things have been quiet so far this year, Haggai said.
But on Monday, the head of the ultra-religious Shas party, Eli Yishai, was quoted as saying that "the homosexuals are poisoning the Jewish people's capital."
Leftwing Meretz parliamentarian Zahava Galon reportedly criticized Yishai for expressing "ignorance, racism and prejudice."
Last year, in a rare show of solidarity, Israel's two chief rabbis, leaders in the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Churches as well as Muslim leaders from Jerusalem and northern Israel, banded together to denounce the international event in Jerusalem and called on the government to intervene.
It "will offend the very foundations of our religious values and the character of the Holy City," the leaders said in a joint statement.
This time around, at least one Evangelical group -- the Jerusalem Prayer Team led by Mike Evans -- has already launched an online petition.
Evans urged supporters to gather signatures from friends in an effort to mobilize one million Christians to petition Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski to do everything in his power to stop the WorldPride event.
Lupolianski, the city's first Orthodox Jewish mayor, has been an outspoken critic of public homosexual events in the past.
Last year, the Jerusalem District Court ordered Lupolianski to personally pay 30,000 shekels (about $6,670) and the municipality to pay the same amount to the JOH for trying to halt the annual homosexual "pride" parade in Jerusalem.
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