Curses. I’m not a big fan of cursing people as a means of dealing with evil. I don’t remember seeing that option laid out for me in the Torah as a remedy against public homosexual behavior. Nor do I think it is in the Gemara or Halacha. Be that as it may, this is in part the remedy offered by the Edah HaCharedis in Israel to fight off the Gay Pride parade. “Damn the Gays!”
OK. If that’s how they want to handle it, it’s their business. I do not agree with this method at all, but it’s none of my business who curses who. I’m in fact pretty sure that the Edah has been cursed over its existence by more than one individual, some of them pretty Frum, I’ll bet. Curses do not disrupt the peace.
The problem is that they do not want to stop there. They are now calling for violence.
Let’s peek at the future a bit by looking at the past. What was accomplished last time there was a protest like this? Jerusalem was trashed. Some innocent people were hurt and many more were inconvenienced. And the city looked like it had been vandalized by the worst of type gang members. Dumpsters overturned, trash burning in the streets. A beautiful city was ransacked. The result… the parade was moved from the streets of Jerusalem to a Jerusalem stadium. What a victory! The evil homosexuals were defeated. Never to be seen again. Until now, less than a year later. So, where’s the victory?
I guess the Edah feels if at first you don’t succeed try, try again. Only this time try harder. How much harder…? Are we going to see another knife wielding crazy person like the one we saw at a prior protest? …who will be inspired by the angry call of Edah head Rabbi Tuvia Weiss trying to stab a few homosexuals? Wouldn’t surprise me at all. The call to violence by Rabbi Weiss did not have any tempering words. It was instead a call to increase the violence to in his words: “shake the foundations”.
By now most people know my views about homosexuality. They are to be treated like human beings. V’Ahavta L’Re’echa Kamocha is not contingent on the level of Torah observance of one’s fellow Jew. If one has forbidden urges, one is not to be shunned because of it. And if one does act on them, he should be rebuked and dissuaded from repeating their transgressions … not just a homosexual or a heterosexual act but any Halachic violations.
The advocacy position of the parade organizers is what I am opposed to. No one should be advocating lifestyles that the Torah forbids. But succumbing to forbidden urges is part of the human condition and human frailty. Violators who succumb to a forbidden Taavah should be looked at sympathetically. It is the willful violators who proclaim it as a legitimate lifestyle that I oppose. And that is why I oppose the parade. And perhaps even more so, I oppose these kinds of parades because they are often a disgusting display of aberrant behavior by half dressed individuals, who think nothing displays of their private body parts in public.
Doing so in the holy city of Jerusalem makes the outrage all the greater. And in fact I don’t even blame the reaction the Edah has to this parade. The parade is an outrage! It is not about the dignity that so many Homosexuals crave and don’t get in our society. If it were just about that, I’m not sure the Edah would be so upset. Although they would be legitimately opposed, they would not be threatening to shake the foundations of Jerusalem.
But they are not justified, in my view at all to call for violent protest. Their protests which they view as a Kiddsuh HaShem have the potential to make an even greater Chilul HaShem instead. And there is the additional real possibility of innocent people getting hurt… as happened last time when the protest called for were not as severe. The more violent the protest, the more the media will get involved and broadcast to the world… NOT that the ultra Orthodox are protecting the sanctity of Jerusalem, but that they are a bunch of intolerant, primitive violent Jews no better than Hamas terrorists. It isn’t true of course, but that is how they will be portrayed. Ahhh… but will say that at least they are on record as opposing homosexuality. (As if no one realizes this yet!)
This is not a call for a peaceful protest. This is a clarion call for violent resistance. And to make maters worse, they consider the police the enemy here too.
Can any police officer be blamed for considering the Edah protesters the enemy after being put in the same basket as the gay paraders and cursed right along with them?
Last time something like this happened is 1968 in Chicago. The police were called pigs by the anti-Vietnam war protesters. The police reacted violently.
Cursing the police in Jerusalem is the moral equivalent of calling them pigs. I’d better not hear anything about police brutality after this is all over. You reap what you sow.
