The concept of holding an international gay parade in Jerusalem, a city of many faces and tastes, has sparked controversy from the moment the idea had come to life.
Now, the global gay parade in Jerusalem has been cancelled due to the upcoming “disengagement plan” scheduled to take place this summer. The gay festival will be held in a different city this year and organizers say it will likely be rescheduled for Jerusalem in August 2006.
The city of Jerusalem had been selected to host the 2005 InterPride international gay and lesbian parade, an event that could potentially have attracted hundreds of thousands of tourists. The highly controversial ten day, "Jerusalem World Pride 2005," was scheduled to take place in the city in mid-August, but has now been officially cancelled.
The World Pride Parade was set to be held in August, which is when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's planned pullout from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank is to take place. According to Israeli military and police estimates, the pullout process could take up to two months, and is expected to be strongly opposed by many.
“We are part of this nation, and as such, cannot deny that the withdrawal plan is to start simultaneously at the time of the global gay events. Therefore, it has been decided upon to cancel the events”, Itai Pinkas, member of the Tel Aviv city council and of the Homo-Lesbian community said.
Pinkas added that from the security point-of-view, the Jerusalem police has done all it can not to prevent the parade from taking place, “but we have decided, as residents of the state of Israel, not to celebrate at a time when Jews are being evacuated from their homes”.
A mixed and unique coalition including various religious groups such as Evangelical Christians, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, and a right-wing MP - was set up in recent months in response to the World Pride Parade. The coalition claimed that the parade will end religious tourism to Jerusalem.
Clerics warned that such a gathering would invoke God's wrath and consistently described homosexuality a "sin." In April, leaders of Jerusalem's liberal Jewish movements expressed their support for the event and denounced the coalition of Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious leaders opposed to the event as a "desecration of God."
During a joint press conference in Jerusalem’s Open House, representatives of the Jewish Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist movements said that the "unholy alliance" that has emerged between the unlikely allies, which includes both of Israel's chief rabbis, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Catholic Archbishop Pietro Sambi and leaders of the Muslim community, is a misuse of religious authority by people who should be "more concerned with justice" than with bigotry.
Jerusalem, a city representing a wide range of national, religious, and socioeconomic groups, held its first annual local gay parade only three years ago. The colorful celebration has been the source of repeated debate each year, with many religious city councilors and a significant number of city residents considering such an event inappropriate for a holy city.
When the first local parade was held in Jerusalem in 2002, former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert withheld city funding for the event, after failing to persuade organizers and participants to join Tel Aviv's parade, where a gay pride procession has been held for years with a much larger turnout.
The Jerusalem Municipality was later ordered by the Supreme Court to pay the organizers NIS 40,000 (about US$10,000) for the annual event, in keeping with the amount the municipality contributed toward previous city marches. The last international gay parade, which took place in the Italian capital of Rome in 2000, attracted about half a million participants.
Even before the conflict with the Gaza Strip withdrawal surfaced, the notion of holding such an international parade in Jerusalem, holy to the world's three major monotheistic religions, was a source of immense controversy.
In a largely conservative city, with a strong religious and traditional composition, the idea of holding such a gay parade in Jerusalem was viewed by many, even outside of religious circles, as "out of touch" with both the special spiritual character of the city as well as the sensitivities of its observant residents.
© 2005 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
