And Everybody Hates the Gays

I am always deeply grateful for the respect and tolerance shown me by my fellow human beings:

JERUSALEM -- Christian leaders condemned it. Jewish radicals put a bounty on participants. Muslim clerics threatened to flood the streets with protesters. Jerusalem's conflicting religions have found rare common ground: opposition to an international gay pride parade next month.

"We consider this offensive and harmful to the religious integrity of the city," said Sheik Taissir Tamimi, head of the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"This group of homosexuals, we consider them impure," he said, calling on Palestinians to take to the streets to prevent marchers from entering east Jerusalem, where the holy sites are located. They "must not be allowed to enter Jerusalem."

The march is the centerpiece of the seven-day WorldPride festival, intended to bring people of different faiths and cultures to a strife-torn city in an example of peaceful coexistence, said Hagai Elad, executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, which is organizing the event.

It also makes the statement that gays have as much right to the holy city's heritage as anyone else, he said.

"People on the one hand talk about the holiness of Jerusalem and at the same time are speaking in unacceptable ways against the dignity of other human beings," he added. "How that contributes to the holiness of Jerusalem is something that I don't understand."

....

[L]ocal leaders in this deeply conservative city are pushing to have the gathering canceled.

Rabbi Shlomo Amar, one of Israel's two chief rabbis, wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI, urging him to issue a "strong, emotional, unequivocal statement against this terrible phenomenon."

"The evil are coming upon (Jerusalem) to desecrate its honor and to humiliate its glory with acts that the Torah despises and that are despised by all the religions," Amar wrote. "In addition, they also want to negatively influence babies, children and teenagers, to ruin them and bring them down the path of destruction."

The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party has submitted a no-confidence motion against the government over the parade, accusing authorities of not doing enough to stop it.

...

The festival was originally scheduled for last summer, but organizers delayed it out of sensitivity for Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Thousands marched in a local gay pride parade instead, weathering insults from protesters and a stabbing attack by an ultra-Orthodox Jew that wounded three people.

The threat of violence has resurfaced this year. An anonymous flyer distributed in some ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods Tuesday offered about $4,400 to anyone who killed a marcher.

I'm filled with the spirit of brotherly love. Oh, dear. That was perhaps a most unfortunate phrase. I'm just being deliberately provocative, aren't I? Triple shame on me for my vile sins.

Screw you, major Western religions.

(via IOZ)

AND: Still more homo-hating, via Roy. Even the Gay Games suck now. Oh, no! "Suck." Shouldn't have said that. My evil knows no limits! You should fear me. And you do.

Good.