Gay Pride, Gay Marriage, and Israel: A Tale of Two Cities
For a country with heavily religion-infused politics, gay couples in Israel enjoy an impressive number of legal rights.
President Obama’s recent signing of the memorandum extending benefits to same-sex federal workers was designed to placate those pushing for gay marriage — and it was carefully timed to take place during Gay Pride Month.
While most Americans are familiar with the gay marriage debate within the U.S., the controversy has reached across the world to the Middle East.
In Israel, Gay Pride Month’s main attraction was an unprecedented and provocative public marriage ceremony joining five same-sex couples in civil matrimony.
The atmosphere at the ceremony was festive and traditionally Jewish: there was a chuppah and glasses were crunched underfoot. But it was completely symbolic. Civil marriages performed within the country’s borders, even for heterosexuals, are not recognized.
The Jewish nation has no separation of church — or synagogue, or mosque — and state. Only weddings performed by clergy, or those legally performed overseas, are recognized. Traditionally, Israeli couples who do not want an Orthodox rabbi presiding at their nuptials have headed for a variety of locations, from nearby Cyprus to far-away Vegas.
But for the increasingly outspoken Israeli gay community the symbolic event was a first step toward receiving the social benefits and tax breaks that their counterparts in the U.S. are also fighting for. The community has traveled a long distance in a short time. A mere fifteen years ago, gays in Israel were subject to random arrests on trumped prostitution charges and couples were ridiculed or physically assaulted for holding hands or for any other displays of public affection.
Israel is a constant clash of religions, ideas, and politics. A running joke in the country is that the one thing Christian, Jewish, and Islamic leaders agree upon is their abhorrence of homosexuality.
And yet, this year’s Gay Pride Month wedding drew scant protest. A meager show of protesters made an appearance at the parade, but there was no violence. There was, naturally, Deputy Prime Minister/Shas MK Eli Yishai publicly demanding the event be canceled. But he was doing his political duty. He is, after all, representing a party originally coined the “Sephardic Keepers of the Torah.”
His call went unheeded.
Why did it go so smoothly, with nary a demonstration or a mention in the international news? It’s all about location. “Only in Tel Aviv,” the Jerusalem Post headlined the wedding.
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15 Comments
1. Sergio Rovasio:Sergio , puoi farlo mettere su gai.it e gay.tv
Jul 3, 2009 - 3:03 am 2. Proud_Kafir7908:un abbraccio,Anita
Leftards who wish Israel were wiped off the map to make way for mahoundian dreams of resurrecting their sewage caliphate/sultanate under sharia law should read this.
There’s no other country in the Middle East where people who are openly gay enjoy such rights. On the contrary, homosexuality is considered a “crime” often punishable by death in all mahoundian countries surrounding Israel, despite the hard fact that Arabs are extremely hypocritical in their homophobia, as the article “The Kingdom in the Closet – Gay Saudi Arabia” and Quran 76:19 can attest.
Jul 3, 2009 - 6:50 am 3. Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian:I wonder if any of the usual commenters who oppose equality for homosexuals in the U.S. will object to the violent rioting, stabbings and destruction of property by the ultra-religious in Israel done in the name of opposing equality for homosexuals described in this piece. They were pretty angry about the demonstrations by gays after Prop. 8 was passed in California due to activism against their equality by a coalition of religions. So, was their outrage about ANY violent protest? Or will they give silent approval to ones that seek to crush equality for people of whom they disapprove?
Jul 3, 2009 - 9:09 am 4. Strawman:Israeli politics is stranger than most Yankees can imagine. These ultra-orthodox parties are a pox on the nation; they’re not Zionists, and are immune from the draft. They’re freeloaders. OTOH, Tel Aviv isn’t exactly a center of Zionism, either. It’s so left-wing, many are actively supporting Hamas.
Both, each in their own way, represent a threat to the survival of Israel. Neither should be held up as an example of the nation.
Jul 3, 2009 - 9:34 am 5. Toronto Girl:Having lived in Tel Aviv for several years, I can personally attest to the freedoms and acceptance that gays have in Israel. Arabs and Jews marched together during the parades, (some coming from the Palestinian territories as was reported in the Jerusalem Post) oberservers were religious and non-religious, straight and gay. It was festive and open and without fear. I worked with 3 lesbians. Their partners were invited to all our work functions and vacations. When I read about those homosexuals in the West supporting Israeli boycotts and jumping on the pro-Moslem wagon, it makes my blood boil. I dare them to step one foot in any Arab country as an open-gay. Of course, it’s easy to critcize from the safety of your own backyard.
Jul 3, 2009 - 11:34 am 6. David W. Lincoln:Nonetheless, the protections accorded by the law are no match to the price paid by those who line up with the inferior choice to communicate the reality that men and women are different, and this is the case because there is more involved than men and women.
Call it a carry-over from the “Possessor vs. Non-Possessor” debate in Russia after the successful overthrow of the Mongol yoke.
For the non-possessors steadfastly upheld the ban
Jul 3, 2009 - 12:47 pm 7. Blarty Blarckleblart:of using the civil arm to punish what falls short
of the universal standard.
In Israel, Gay Pride Month’s main attraction was an unprecedented and provocative public marriage ceremony joining five same-sex couples in civil matrimony.
I assume five “opposite marriages” collapsed as a result of this vicious attack.
Jul 3, 2009 - 1:32 pm 8. Marilyn:Does anyone, besides me, read the Bible anymore?
Jul 3, 2009 - 11:27 pm 9. RightwingHippyChick:This one I totally fail to understand about the right — getting married and committing to a lifelong relationship are conservative values, instead, the right acts like the left here and vice versa.
Do people think that if they prevent gays from having a normal life that they’ll turn straight? Or is there some kind of revenge going on here?
It just does not make sense for the right to go against conservative core values and maybe one day someone will explain this complete irrationality here.
(remember, it’s the liberals who is against people forming life-long bonds out of principle… Oh well, there is nowt queerer than folks as they say!)
Jul 4, 2009 - 2:22 am 10. Meryl:8. Marilyn
Yes.
Jul 4, 2009 - 3:19 am 11. Marc Malone:#9 RightWingHippyChick – I don’t care if they want to commit themselves in a gross parody of traditional nuptials. I think they should have all the rights of any civil contract available to others as a matter of equal access to the law.
However, I don’t want it to be called marriage. Marriage is a load-bearing beam of our society. It is necessary to the proper upbringing of our children. The fact that marriage has become so dispensable has contributed greatly to the decay of our society. As marriage rates go down, and divorces go up, our society becomes more dysfunctional in direct relation.
So, we must build back up the value of marriage in our society to arrest the decline. We need to exalt it. People need to treat it as truly valuable. Couples need to work to make it work. We need to honor those who have held together marriages for long periods of time, so that they’ll be less likely to abandon such status.
With that premise, I say we cannot afford to water down the issue by allowing gay marriage. I want my kids to grow up seeing marriage as one thing, not as some morally equivalent thing. I want the example set properly. One can talk all one wants, but it is the deeds which children see. Men and women get married and stay married. That is the norm I want them to see and emulate. I want this to be their reality. Our society depends upon it.
Jul 4, 2009 - 1:08 pm 12. RightwingHippyChick:Marc, marriage as an institution was dead the moment we allowed divorce to be legal — the game theory calculation changed drastically and it no longer is paramount to ‘get along’ with your spouse – if the current one is ‘broken’ you can just discard and fish for a new one, better luck next time! Frankly, modern marriage is not real marriage since it’s been downgraded to be a more involved engagement that can be canceled like a bad purchase.
And that is the real problem we have, the nature of the commitment has changed fundamentally and was broken at the core, long before gays even we legalised.
So, I’m not understanding why promoting marriage (or the sorry construct that is called this nowadays) undermines the little that is left of the institution, if anything gays marrying saves the taxpayer lots of money, ensures they have someone to look after them in their old age and settles them down too. In other words, marriage(or however you want to call this particular commitment) helps everyone, straight or gay and society in general.
I don’t think it’s good for kids to grow up seeing people who never bond and who are not allowed to either officially — and that broken legal structure that passes for marriage nowadays is not a good example of real marriage either: in other words, an unmarried gay couple who have been devoted to each other for 20 years are a far better example for all of us than people who nip down to Vegas for yet another marriage every 2-3 years, a ‘married’ woman whose kids are all fatherless half-siblings is a disaster for us all.
True gays don’t bring up kids, but there are plenty of childfree marriages, and no-one thinks that those people are not really married.
I personally like to see people to marry and to stay with each other so they can evolve into the full human being they should be, regardless of their sexuality, because people who have bonded with a partner properly are much nicer to have around and they are the folks in this world who usually take the adult role in life and get things done.
Jul 5, 2009 - 3:15 am 13. Cynthia Yockey, A Conservative Lesbian:#5, Toronto Girl:
If it makes you feel any better, I am a staunch supporter of Israel and have been all my life.
The second I knew about Obama’s Muslim upbringing and current involvement with anti-Israel Muslims (are there any other kind? I don’t know) I knew I could never support his candidacy because he would never support equality for gays in any practical way.
Another thing that led me to conservatism was all the research I had to do about Obama in the fall of 2008 for an e-mail discusssion I had with a Jewish friend who was passionately committed to Obama — while I was passionately committed to McCain/Palin from the moment McCain announced Gov. Palin as his VP choice. I carefully researched all of Obama’s anti-Israel positions and allies and friends and sent my friend links so she could see for herself how bad an Obama presidency would be for Israel and all Jews, but she remained devoted to Obama to a level that I finally regarded as crazy and in January I dropped the friendship. I cannot fathom how 80 percent of American Jews sold out Israel by voting for Obama.
Jul 5, 2009 - 9:01 am 14. Abu Infidel:The government should get out of the marriage business. You don’t need a license to have children and you shouldn’t need one to get married. Prior to the Civil War people were just married in their church of choice.
You shouldn’t need government approval for your choice of marriage partner (or partners if you’re inclined to polygamy). It’s the state sticking its nose into the private affairs of its citizens.
Jul 6, 2009 - 7:10 am 15. Abu Infidel:Cynthia;
Kosovar, Bosnian, and Albanian Muslims are actually quite pro-Isreal, seeing themselves in a similar position. Also, Kurds see the whole Arab-Isreali conflict as an ethnic issue, not one of religion. They’re not on the Arab side, of course.
Jul 6, 2009 - 7:19 am