"We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty"

From the Times:

International gay leaders are planning a 10-day WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem in August, saying they want to make a statement about tolerance and diversity in the Holy City, home to three great religious traditions.

Now major leaders of the three faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - are making a rare show of unity to try to stop the festival. They say the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

The article goes on to talk about a number of very interesting points, but one is especailly striking: the opposition of these Israeli religious leaders is being engineered, even literally paraded, by the American leader of an evangelical church that holds its services in a southern California hotel. But the article doesn't even quite give you the whole story when it calls this an internationalization of "the American culture wars over homosexuality," since in fact BOTH sides of the Jerusalem debate are profoundly contingent on developments in US political culture. We might ask why, that is, it makes sense for cities the world over celebrate the anniversary of an a civil disturbance that took place in lower Manhattan.

At the same time, for me at least, no amount of cultural relativism or historicity changes the fact that this is a question about whether or not gay people have full citizenship rights in Jerusalem. Remember, in 1970, when the first gay pride celebrations were organized in the United States, getting a police permit for a gay event was impossible in any city. The LAPD chief compared the idea to sanctioning a "parade of thieves and burglars." Today, when big-city governing regimes have become the locus of by far the greatest level of gay political power, even Republican mayoral candidates in many cities can't afford to skip the annual pride parade.

As for the religious leaders and their "unity"...it's always touching when folks put aside their differences to make sure full citizenship rights don't get into the wrong hands.