Posted on 08/02/2009 9:38:37 AM PDT by Maelstorm
There is an old joke around these parts. Question: Other than Jerusalem, what do ultra-religious Jews, Muslims and Christians love? Answer: They love to hate homosexuals.
But travel the 60km (40 miles) from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, and you enter a world apart. Major streets are decked with the multi-coloured Gay Pride banner.
In this centenary year of the city, this is now Gay Pride month. On Friday, in Meir Dizengoff park, tens of thousands of people are expected to attend the annual Gay Pride parade which will end, this year, with a twist.
Four couples will take part in what is being called Israel's first, public, gay wedding ceremony.
Tal Dekel and Itay Gourevitch, are sitting, wedged happily next to each other, on a park bench. Tal is a fashion designer, Itay a website editor. Both are 33. They have been together for eight years, since the night they met in a club.
Two weeks ago, they decided to get married. "It's a chance to have our own rights: to have a quiet corner with our family, just like everyone else," says Tal.
Itay says that things have improved for gay and lesbian Israelis. He can now, at least in Tel Aviv, walk down the street, arm in arm with his partner. "Fifteen years ago, I would have been beaten up."
But there is still discrimination, he says. "As a gay couple, we can't get a loan to buy a house together. We don't have the right to adopt a child: we'd have to go abroad to do that. But we have all the obligations: we have to pay all the taxes."
BIBLICAL BAN
The idea of the "weddings" was Yaniv Weizmann's. He has a unique position in Israeli local government. He is the advisor to the mayor of Tel Aviv on gay affairs, as well as tourism.
Mr Weizmann says that he wanted to draw attention to the fact that Israel's gay community (which he estimates is one in 10 of the population) is growing older, and so cares now about getting married and starting a family.
Binyamin Babayoff The weddings will, he predicts, be "very beautiful and very, very emotional". They will have all the Jewish trimmings: a canopy, a glass to break, a certificate.
But he also is aware of the limitations. State-recognised non-religious marriages, along with all the tax breaks and legal rights which those afford, will only come, he says, when Russian immigrants (many of whom are not Jewish) and gay people, and other groups who do not meet the religious standards of the Orthodox establishment, campaign together. Until then, "the power will stay in the hands of the religious guys in Israel."
One of those "religious guys" has an office in City Hall just down the corridor from Mr Weizmann.
As he squeezes into his small room, Councilman Binyamin Babayoff, from the ultra-religious Shas Party, produces a Bible and a fluorescent green marker pen.
He highlights Leviticus Chapter 18, Verse 22, for my benefit: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination."
Mr Babayoff says that the weddings will turn Tel Aviv into a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. He reaches for the rhetorical question: "If a man wants to marry his sister, would that be OK? Would it be alright if, tomorrow, he wanted to marry his mother?"
But despite his profound convictions, he accepts that the highly religious are in a minority in Tel Aviv, and that "we live in a democracy".
"Just because you don't agree, it doesn't mean that you then have to go and make a big noise about it in public." It is enough, he says, to point out that "it is such a grave offence according to the Torah."
OFFICIAL COMMITMENT
Israel's democratic credentials, are, however, questioned by the lawyer, Irit Rosenblum. Her New Family group is run out of one of the most handsom streets in Tel Aviv.
"We are the only democracy in the world," she says, "that has no civil marriage."
She began her fight to change that, nine years ago. Back then, she says, they were "weirdos". Now, though, she sees more and more consensus.
New Family has produced a card, which, for about $60, will aim to prove, officially, a couple's commitment.
They sign an affadavit in front of a lawyer, and in return receive a small laminated card which, Irit Rosenblum says, affords the couple a range of municipal benefits, including easier parking, reduced health club membership, and lower local tax. "Now they are considered to be a family."
All this is still some distance from the situation in, for example, Britain - where the state now recognises civil partnerships between same-sex couples. But last week, there were signs of change stirring.
The speaker of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) attended a conference, in the Knesset, on gay rights.
Reuven Rivlin, of the governing right-wing Likud Party, declared: "The gay sector has been persecuted for many years... I need to stand up straight and say that you can be respected for any way in which you choose to lead your lives. Bear the flag that you hoist with pride."
These are two lesbians, right?
Throughout the Old Testament runs a theme that when the Nation of Israel embraced sin and debauchery they got hammered by God. I don’t see why modern times would be any different.
Will the gay moils offer all the usual trimmings, too?
Who stomps on the glass? Whose blood is on the wedding night bedsheet? So many questions.
What you said.
I have no idea why people have to say, because someone is against gay marriage, that they hate homsexuals. It’s ridiculous!
Exactly but that is what they do. I’m against gay activism of any kind. It is a depraved and horrible nasty thing that if shown to the world they would recoil with disgust (well those of us who have any sense of disgust left). I never have hated a gay person but I do hate the activism and the public perversion they get away with. I also hate the covering up of the real connections between molestation and homosexuality. It is a common thread in the lives of so many gay men but is totally ignored and if you do bring up that fact you are called a bigot and are informed that pedophiles only like little kids as if they are an exclusive group all to themselves which is patently not true and is a modern fiction and a dangerous one at that.
Rock Hudson for example was molested when he was 9. Very seldom if you look back in the history of a gay man do you not find an older man or older teenager introducing them to the behavior.
Now they want to integrate acceptance of the behavior into public schools. Many have even in red states without the parents knowledge.
You should take a look at the San Franscicko event at this link to see exactly how depraved things can get and are getting.
http://www.americansfortruth.com
Mr Weizmann says that “..he wanted to draw attention to the fact that Israel’s gay community (which he estimates is one in 10 of the population)”
[1 in 10]= 10% Well that’s a number you can trust???, no motivation to exaggerate.
It is wonderful how they can throw out numbers, which are off by an order of magnitude, without ever being challenged.
In Denver a couple years ago the local homeless advocates were trying to get the city to fund a housing project for the homeless, something like 500 units. Someone on the City Council challenged the advocates, reminding them that their most recent estimate put Denver’s homeless population at over 10,000.
After some tap dancing and torturing of the English language, the advocates admitted that the actual number of truly homeless was closer to 500 than the 10,000 “official” count.
Something tells me when push comes to shove, in the congressional committees, when they debate the number of truly uninsured, the 47 million ends up being more like 4.7 million.
By embracing such behavior, you are mocking people who believe in the Bible and God....that He made man and woman...and that there is any biological truth in science. Who is the hater?????? I say those who are FOR gay marriage are the haters...of everything Good about humanity--the biological family...(gay marriage is advocating child abuse and forcing their warped perception (and sexual obsession) on nature as something natural).
Yes, I would say it is key to the survival of mankind for the right of children to be raised and loved by their biological parents (and it should be the main focus of any government). The family unit as understood in America has proved far superior to any family formation in the history of the world....to try to destroy that institution of family is the most evil.
No-one's. Instead of stamping a glass, they ritually bite a pillow.
Whose blood is on the wedding night bedsheet?
Depends which one has hemorrhoids.
Good G-d.
No-one's. Instead of stamping a glass, they ritually bite a pillow.
Whose blood is on the wedding night bedsheet?
Depends which one has hemorrhoids.
Good G-d.
Something about that joke doesn't ring true. Unless the "around here" the author is referring to is his or her favorite gay bar, I'd say we have a definite example of...
The prophecies that deal with the last days predict exactly that.
These freaks should be put in an asylum where they can't hard society any further with their “lifestyle”
“I have no idea why people have to say, because someone is against gay marriage, that they hate homsexuals. It’s ridiculous!”
Yes, they need to get it right. God hates sin and homosexuality is sin... that’s good enough for me.
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Those who love since actually hate God.
“I have no idea why people have to say, because someone is against gay marriage, that they hate homsexuals. It’s ridiculous!”
Yes, they need to get it right. God hates sin and homosexuality is sin... that’s good enough for me.
Love the sinner, hate the sin.
Those who love sin actually hate God.
I think it applies to all the gay activists.... the ones who are trying to force their values and thinking on religious communities and forcing the redefinition of the family -which goes against Nature’s Law, and therefore the Constitution. Their paradigm is trying to make mothers and fathers irrelevant—to deny nature— which is a tremendous evil to all children and all societies.
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