A far cry from the days of yore, when sacred male prostitutes were housed in the Jerusalem Temple........:

"Jerusalem's Gay Pride March gets Canceled 

By Dion Nissenbaum

McClatchy Newspapers

JERUSALEM — Jerusalem's lesbian and gay community has unintentionally succeeded in doing something that has eluded the world's greatest thinkers: Unite the three major monotheistic religions.

Orthodox Jews, conservative Muslims and prominent Christian leaders are united in their opposition to a gay-pride march in Jerusalem, a city that's holy to all three religions.

The pope called for today's march to be canceled. Muslim leaders criticized it as a disgrace. Orthodox Jews organized weeks of violent demonstrations.

Jerusalem police warned that violent opposition could lead to tragedy and urged Israeli leaders to call it off.

On Thursday, faced with new security concerns related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, organizers shelved the march and offered to hold a more isolated rally at Hebrew University's stadium instead.

The city's ultra-Orthodox opponents of the march hailed the deal as a victory.

"A lot of people are very happy because a level of purity has been returned to Jerusalem," said Rabbi Yehuda Levin, head of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. "The holy city of Jerusalem now breathes a sigh of relief that it is not going to be sullied by this kind of event."

Even though the agreement was expected to defuse potential clashes today, the monthslong emotional controversy evolved into much more than a debate over the gay-pride march. It became a battle over the soul of Jerusalem.

"We are struggling with something that is much deeper than gay rights," Sa'ar Nathaniel, Jerusalem's only openly gay city councilman, said before the agreement was announced. "We are struggling about the image of Jerusalem: Will it be pluralistic and tolerant and democratic, or a twin city of Tehran or Kabul?

"And maybe we are not just struggling about Jerusalem," Nathaniel added. "We are struggling about Israel."

At its heart, the fight pitted Jerusalem's increasingly influential ultra-Orthodox community against the dwindling numbers of secular Jerusalemites. While the conservative Jews make up about a third of the city population, they represent the fastest-growing Jewish sector and control nearly half of the City Council's 31 seats. In 2003, the city elected its first ultra-Orthodox as mayor.

This rise in political power has coincided with a slow exodus of secular residents from Jerusalem, tilting influence in the city Israel considers its political and spiritual capital toward the ultra-Orthodox.

Outside Jerusalem, Israel is considered relatively progressive on gay rights. Tel Aviv has a reputation for tolerance, there's no ban on gays serving in the military and the country's anti-discrimination laws cover homosexuals.

Although the gay-pride march had been held for four years in Jerusalem, it struck a nerve last summer when organizers made the parade the centerpiece of a planned international gay-pride festival. The march was twice delayed, most recently because of the war in Lebanon. But opponents kept up their pressure when it was rescheduled for this month.

Elchanan Glatt, executive director of a Zionist youth organization who helped organize a protest, called the march "a slap in the face in public."

"The major problem is choosing Jerusalem," Glatt said. "It's not Amsterdam."

For two weeks, ultra-Orthodox known as Haredi in Jerusalem's Mea Shearim neighborhood torched cars, threw Molotov cocktails and injured 45 police officers to derail the event.

In an attempt to address concerns, organizers tried to keep the march low-key.

At first, organizers agreed to move the route to the government center, away from more populated areas. Then, on Thursday, they offered to cancel the march and hold the rally at the stadium instead. [http://seattletimes.nwsource.com]

 "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution."--US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in her ruling against the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program

"My French is poor, but my heart is rich.  I love France- the art-making, art-loving, and art-supporting people of France." -David Lynch

See http://www.tremblingbeforeg-d.com/inthenameofallah/invite.html:

"Please join us to support the new documentary film

IN THE NAME OF ALLAH
[working title]


Monday, June 12, 2006
6:30 to 8:30 pm
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts 31 Mercer Street New York City

Cocktails Hors d'oeuvres by Devi a 12-minute preview of the film with director Parvez Sharma and producer Sandi DuBowski and Music by Ashu Rai of Sholay Productions

Filmed in twelve different countries and in nine languages, In the Name of Allah [working title] is the first-ever feature-length documentary to explore the complex global intersections of Islam and homosexuality. With unprecedented access and depth, gay Muslim filmmaker Parvez Sharma brings to light the hidden lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Muslims and goes where the silence has been loudest in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh, as well as in Turkey, France, India, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom The majority of gay and lesbian Muslims must travel a lonely and often dangerous road. In some nations with a Muslim majority, laws based on Quranic interpretations are enforced by authorities to monitor, entrap, imprison, torture and even execute homosexuals. Even for those who migrate to Europe or North America and adopt Western personae of "gay," the relative freedoms of new homelands are mitigated by persistent racial profiling and intensified state surveillance after the terrorist attacks in New York, London and Madrid As a result, many gay and lesbian Muslims end up renouncing their religion. But the real-life characters of In the Name of Allah aren't willing to abandon a faith they cherish, despite its flaws. Instead, they struggle to reconcile their ardent belief with the innate reality of their being. The international chorus of gay, lesbian and transgender Muslims brought together by In the Name of Allah doesn't seek to vilify or reject Islam, but rather negotiate a new relationship to it. In doing so, the film's extraordinary characters point the way for all Muslims to move beyond the hostile, war-torn present, toward a more hopeful future As one can imagine, it was a difficult decision for the subjects to participate in the film due to the violence they could face. However, those who have come forward to tell their stories feel this film is too important for 1.4 billion Muslims and non-Muslims around the world for them to say no. They feel Islam is at a tipping point and they are willing to take the risk We are currently filming a breaking story on Shiite death squads who are kidnapping and killing gay and transgender people in Iraq under a fatwa from the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, as well as a group of Iranian gay refugees who escaped torture and fled across the border into Turkey. Two of them have just received asylum in Canada, and we are shooting their journey to an uncertain freedom. Our needs for funding are immediate as we wrap shooting and edit the film to premiere in early 2007."

 "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution."--US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in her ruling against the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program

"My French is poor, but my heart is rich.  I love France- the art-making, art-loving, and art-supporting people of France." -David Lynch

I guess there are some moral absolutes that even the most diverse religions can agree on...

It's a shame that they all aren't as one on some of the more major fundamentals such as love for, and tolerance of, non-members of their religions...Or the universal power of forgiveness...Or the need to focus on the poor and underprivileged...