Warning: I’m going to offend some people by what I’m about to say. So, if you’re one of those people who only wants to read happy things that don’t make anyone upset, read no further. Go over to the web site for People Magazine instead. Now, for the rest of you…
I’m an American citizen, but I’m going to suggest an official legislative act in Israel to rename Orthodox Judaism, so that it will instead be called Ortho Judaism. I suggest that name because Orthodox Judaism is showing itself to be a poison in Israeli society, a deadly presence that kills peace, stability, and freedom.
Yesterday, it was announced that a gay pride parade that was to be held in Jerusalem will have to be cancelled because it has become unsafe for the gay people who were to participate to walk down the street in the open.
Orthodox Jews in Israel declared that the gay pride parade would be an abomination in a holy city, and must not be allowed to take place. Orothodox Jewish leader Rabbi Yosef Elnikaveh proclaimed that to allow the parade would be to unleash “mental illness” upon Jerusalem. Then, hundreds of his followers took to the streets for several nights in a row, fighting with police, and turning over trash cans and lighting the contents on fire in protest of the coming parade.
So, let me get this straight. Orthodox Jews are concerned that people walking down the street in Jerusalem will defile their holy city, and so they responded by dumping garbage in the streets of that holy city, burning that garbage there? That’s not defiling?
If Israeli Orthodox Jews think that people are mentally ill for having a parade to show pride in their identity, do they think that going out at night to burn garbage in the middle of the street is a sign of mental stability?
Have these people forgotten where the symbol of gay pride, the pink triangle, came from? Here’s a hint: The Jews were not the only victims of the Nazi holocaust.
Instead of having a parade, Jerusalem gays will be forced to hold a rally in an enclosed stadium. Hmm… enclosed… kind of like a ghetto.
Am I being harsh? Yes. Am I being anti-semitic? No. This isn’t an anti-Jew rant. It’s an anti-hate rant. There are plenty of reasonable Jews in Israel who have no problem with a gay pride parade. In fact, there are plenty of Jews in Israel who planned on participating in the gay pride parade. The attack on the gay pride parade was an attack against gay Jews by the adherents of Ortho Judaism.
The truth is, you can’t just blame the Jewish nuts. There are other nuts involved too, and Ortho Judaism is only part of the problem. You see, the Orthodox Jews were joined by fundamentalist Muslims who played their own role in forcing the march to be cancelled. One Muslim leader gave his own shrill condemnation of the parade, saying, “This is the Holy Land, not the homo land!”
Oooh! There’s another opportunity to rename something! How about instead of calling it the Holy Land, we call it the Insane Hateful Religious Nuts Land? No, damn it, that’s too long a name for the maps.
Christians, think your religion gets out of this without a scrape? Not on your life. Fundamentalist Christians joined in the anti-gay persecution in Israel too, doing their own holy roller version of the homophobic shiver and shake.
It’s not the gays in Jerusalem that are the problem. It’s the religious extremists who are threatening the security of Israel. Ortho Christians, Ortho Muslims, and Ortho Jews are all acting like gangsters, frightening people off the street out of fear of people being attacked, and doing it in the name of righteousness.
Still think the gays deserve it? Just chew on this idea for a while, then: When your religion causes you to riot and burn garbage in order to prevent a PARADE from being held, it isn’t the parade that’s the problem.
Authoritarians.
Far right wing (Hitler), far left wing (Stalin), fundie Christians, Muslims, Jews and more…
Supposedly strongly supporting their extremes, but in that they agree on way more than the more liberal approaches to each sector, it’s hard to believe.
Some of us think belief should be more than obedience.
how sweet. orthodox jews and fundamentalist moslems finally agreed on something. Eric Hoffer was right. There’s nothing like a common enemy to bring people together.
If it really happened. Once again, no source, no link. It’s so easy to minimize what you’re reading, then open a new window to write a post, then copy and paste the heading from the first article into a link for the second article. For some reason the writer has not done this. Maybe he hasn’t got the facts straight.
Here your link, sweetie, from the oh so respectable and mainstream Time. Now why doesn`t Peregrin want us to know he reads Time?
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1554629,00.html
You`re welcome.
Thanks Peregrin, and I don’t find this offensive at all; and I think you have the right of it. It is not anti jewish, or christian, or islam, to call out hateful actions for condemnation and point out religious hypocrisy.
The author confuses legitimate objection with illegitimate tactics. Just because they have used these tactics (which, incidentally, the overwhelming majority of Jerusalem’s great Rabbis have declared, ad nauseum, to be prohibited), does not ipso facto justify the other side’s provocation.
A democracy has the right to limit parades for any version of sexuality. There is no basic human right to parade your sexuality in public.
Mike, they weren’t parading their sexuality. They were parading their identity. They weren’t having sex in the street.
Does a heterosexual marriage ritual parade sexuality in a church?
Oh, my, how tawdry!
I happened to read this and could not go away with leaving a comment. I speak to not defend either side, just to speak God’s word.
He did not intend for males to be with males, or women to be with women. In Romans 1:24-32 God’s word talks about how (27)men leaving the natural use of a woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Does God condone this behavior – BY NO MEANS!!!!! Does he condone the actions of the Religous nuts – BY NO MEANS!!!! Isn’t that why the Saducees and Pharisee’s killed Jesus on the Cross? They thought they knew God so well, that the missed Him right there in the midst of them. Today, the world is telling us that we must be tolerant. Well, God’s word tells us something entirely different. He wants us to not compromise His word and to quit trying to make Him like us. GOD HATES SIN PERIOD!!!!!! His word warns us that there will come a time when good will be called evil, and evil will be called good. People better wake up and start paying attention before it is too late.
Sharon, I’m sorry, but you are not here to speak God’s word. God told me. He said that I should speak God’s word today…
and that word is…
pickle.
Paul’s letter to the Romans was not written by God. It was written by Paul. It is Paul’s Word.
Paul, man, he sure had some control issues.
In his writing Paul referred to some sort of physical disability he had. Some historians speculate that it might have been sexual in nature, given the virulence of many of his comments about sexuality.
Pingback: Irregular Times » Blog Archive » American Family Association: Violence is a Holy Thing