March takes place for 16th consecutive year under heightened security
Jerusalem is bedecked in rainbow-colored flags, as the city holds its 16th consecutive annual gay pride parade. Up to 20,000 people are expected to participate in Thursday’s festivities, which this year highlights the internal problems faced by religious members of the LGBT community, as well as the general external tensions between the LGBT and religious publics.
Speaking to The Media Line, Eran Glopus, chairperson of The Open House, which organized the parade, explained that the theme of this year’s event—”religion and LGBT”—is especially important “because religious individuals who self-identify as LGBT are marginalized.”
“They will share their stories during the march today,” he elaborated, “and we are not talking about Jews only, also Muslims and Christians. We have a Muslim who will share poetry he wrote about being LGBT.”
Additionally, some of the LGBT community’s biggest critics come from ultra-orthodox individuals and groups, which view homosexuality—in accordance with scripture—as a sin. “The other part of this march is to fight those who are using religion to influence their people to hate us,” Glopus asserted. “Some rabbis in Israel claim that the LGBT community takes away from Jerusalem’s holiness, and we will fight that.”
In fact, just hours before the parade one of Jerusalem’s chief rabbis, Aryeh Stern, came out publicly against it. “It is sad that a couple of days after Tisha B’Av—[the solemn day when Jews commemorate the destruction of the biblical temples]—when masses visited Jerusalem and remembered it being a holy city…. The essence of this parade is contradicting the trend of Jerusalem as a holy city, and that is the city we want.”
Eli Kaplan Wildman, a gay orthodox Jew, stressed to The Media Line that “the religious issue is the next front for the LGBT community—they fought in past to be where they are right now, and it will take time to accept the religious LGBT community.
“There is a need to find a way to get some of the leadership of Israel be more liberal and accept religious people being part of the LGBT community.”
According to Glopus, “some orthodox Jews even call us gay terrorists, which is sad and we will not accept it. They will protest today at the Bluefield garden because they are not very happy with us holding this parade, but they won’t stop us.”
The counter-protest was planned by various extreme-right groups and will take place only a few hundred yards away from the procession. The leader of one such organization, Lehava CEO Bentzi Gopstein, was quoted by local media as saying that the main themes of his demonstration will include, “Jerusalem is not Sodom” and “Do not let them adopt children.”
While police provided a permit for the counter-protest, they have warned dozens of individuals not to disrupt the parade and banned others entirely from entering the capital during the event. Other precautions have been taken, with Israel National Police Spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld telling The Media Line that supplementary security forces—which will number in the hundreds—have been deployed throughout the city, including out-of-uniform officers.
“The police have completed all preparations, equipment and related arrangements in order to ensure public safety at the march, from its beginning until the completion.” Jerusalem police also confirmed that a decision was made “to ban the carrying of weapons to the [parade’s] gathering area, and in the fields of celebration.”
Violence has indeed been directed at the LGBT community in the past. In 2009, a mass shooting at the Tel Aviv branch of the Israeli LGBT Association killed two people and wounded at least fifteen others. The Jerusalem parade itself was targeted on two occasions—by the same man. In 2005, an ultra-orthodox Jew named Yishai Schlissel stabbed three people at the pride event, an attack for which he was jailed for a decade. Just weeks after his release, Schlissel went on another stabbing spree at the Jerusalem march, killing Shira Banki and wounding six others.
Prior to that attack, Schlissel penned a handwritten anti-gay manifesto in which he called the pride parade “shameful” and “blasphemous,” and suggested he was planning to act on his convictions. He subsequently stated that he perpetrated the attack in the name of religion, describing the event as a desecration of God’s name. Authorities were widely condemned for not doing more to prevent what many viewed as a clearly premeditated attack.
Since then, stricter measures have been adopted. This past June, a 20-year-old resident of the central Israeli city of Bnei Brak was arrested after posting a threatening message to his Facebook page: “Who’s coming with me to carry out a terror attack at the pride march?”
Despite the trials and tribulations experienced by gays almost everywhere, Israel is widely regarded an oasis for the LGBT community, not only from a social standpoint, but legally as well. Israel legalized consensual same-sex acts in 1988, with the government passing legislation four years later barring discrimination against gays in the workplace. In 1993, gays and lesbians began serving in the army, with the state soon thereafter granting domestic partner benefits to same-sex couples. While gay marriages are not performed in Israel, the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 to recognize same-sex unions performed abroad.
It is not surprising, then, that Israel’s parliament has a Caucus for the LGBT Community, composed of members from across the political spectrum. In June, it held a session with gay rights activists, in which adoption, surrogate births and sperm donation for same-sex couples were discussed, among other topics.
LGBT Israelis have achieved great successes. There have been multiple gay parliamentarians, CEOs of major corporations and high-ranking military officers. Tel Aviv, specifically, has become one of the premier destinations for members of the LGBT community, with estimates suggesting that between 15-20% of city’s residents self-identify as gay. Tel Aviv’s annual pride parade has become a global phenomenon, attracting more than 200,000 people from around the world.
While barriers to full integration and acceptance remain, the LGBT community has nevertheless become firmly entrenched in Israeli society. The proof will be marching down Jerusalem’s busiest streets on Thursday in a show of rainbow-colored pride.