Jerusalem to host gay event despite religious ire

JERUSALEM - Organisers of next month's gay festival in Jerusalem have vowed to continue with plans for the event in the holy city despite a rare alliance of Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders trying to prevent it.

WorldPride, a week-long international festival with a parade, conference and exhibitions, is due to start on August 6.

"Jerusalem's holiness shines at its best when all human beings are respected equally in the city," said Hagai El-Ad, of Jerusalem Open House, which is organising the event.

"We are determined and committed to hold the WorldPride event in Jerusalem as planned," he said yesterday.

Homosexuality is anathema to many Muslims, Jews and Christians, all of whom have shrines in Jerusalem. Religious leaders have set aside differences at the heart of the Middle East conflict to try to prevent the festival.

Some opponents of WorldPride put up posters offering a $4,500 reward for anyone who kills "one of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah."

The focus of opposition is the planned parade, though organisers dismiss local rumours that marchers would try to reach Jerusalem's holiest site, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).

An ultra-Orthodox Jew stabbed and wounded three participants in a gay pride march in Jerusalem last year.

"We are living in tough days, such events are not ones Jerusalem needs," said Adnan Husseini, director of the Muslim Waqf, which administers Islam's third holiest site.

The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism and also important for Christians. Israel's Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Amar, has appealed to the Pope to speak out personally against the parade. The Vatican has already expressed its opposition.

Evangelical Christian groups call the festival a "calculated and confrontational act meant to provoke and offend."

City authorities say they are not taking sides and have left the decision on whether the parade can go ahead to the police. They plan to make up their minds nearer the time based on security assessments.

At a stormy meeting in Israel's parliament last week, one Muslim cleric said Jerusalem risked divine wrath similar to that which destroyed the biblical city of Sodom if WorldPride is allowed to go ahead.

"If you march, you will cause us damage and also God," Sheikh Abu Ali told a parliamentary committee.

Organisers hoped to hold the festival in 2005, but postponed it fearing it would be difficult at the same time that Israel was withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. The first festival was in 2000 in Rome - as WorldPride put it "on the Pope's doorstep."

The Open House's El-Ad said: "It is really a question of freedom of speech. If the police cannot protect peaceful marchers in a major street in Jerusalem then who is in control of the city?"

- REUTERS