Parade of perversion is under way

[Behind the Aegis]

The head of the Har Etzion Yeshiva, Rabbi Yaakov Madan, published an article about two weeks ago in which he called for "stopping the parade of abomination," referring to the International Gay Pride Parade that will take place in Jerusalem August 10. However, the real parade of abomination is already under way. One after another, rabbis and Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox thinkers, both eminent and those less so, are jumping on the bandwagon and publishing particularly repulsive defamations, invective and incitement against the homo-lesbian community.

Madan, for example, compares the gay parade to the pagan "high places of Tophet" in the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom. These altars, according to the prophet Jeremiah, served to "burn their sons and daughters in the fire" (7:31). And what can be expected for those who offer such sacrifices, according to the prophet? "The carcasses of these people shall be meat for the fowls of the heaven and for the beasts of the earth" (7.34).

Madan partnered with Professor Ruth Gavison to create the Gavison-Madan covenant - an important attempt at dialogue between religious and secular people. The crude-spirited article renders Madan irrelevant for many secular people. Homosexuals and lesbians make up a large and important sector in the Jewish people. They are our brothers and sisters, no less than the rabbi. The Har Etzion Yeshiva is the cradle of the moderate religious movement Meimad. Are the values of hatred of those who are different, as well as the fanning of inclinations, the values that the yeshiva wishes to instill in its students?

The editor in chief of the ultra-Orthodox newspaper Mishpaha, Rabbi Moshe Garelik, writes that the religious protest against the gay pride parade will be joined by many national religious people, "who like us are disgusted by the perverts' attempt." Garelik warns that because of the parade, the third exile will come. The question arises as to whether the rabbi has forgotten that Jerusalem was destroyed not because men lay with men, but because of unnecessary hatred?


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