Queer Values

Bloody hell, that parades and protests and celebrations always have their 'blame Israel for all the world's ills' contingent. Events that have little-to-nothing to do with Israel and Jews always end up somehow dragging issues with Israel into the picture. The endemic hate that simmers deep within the subconscious of so many disturbed human beings seethes and slithers its way into the public forum.

Rallies of all kinds, mounted by unions, by peace activists, by anti-nuclear groups, somehow end up with a side issue that rears itself up front and rabidly central to whatever the issue happens to be, while still bearing no resemblance to the issue itself. It just simply happens that the State of Israel somehow manoeuvres itself into the preoccupation of all these paranoiac, besieged mindsets.

If, somehow, disaster befell Israel, then all the ills of the world would be solved. So why doesn't God strike them all down, those Jews who insist on their right to give Palestinians a reason to mourn their Nakba? That Queers Against Israeli Apartheid undertakes to support Palestinian rights by rallying against Israeli intransigence against self-destruction is fairly queer.

Islam holds homosexuality to be reprehensible, the cure for which is death. Arab states respect that curative imperative. In Israel same-sex marriages are legal. Gays serve openly in the Israeli military. Tel Aviv has more gay bars than most liberal-left Western countries. Gay parades take place in Tel Aviv and no one there holds up signs reading "Queers are horribly queer in Toronto".

Gay pride has resulted from gay fear when Western societies loathed and decried the dreadful abnormality of same-sex relations and visited violence regularly on anyone suspected of being gay. Now, most Western countries view annual Gay Pride Parades with perfect equanimity and amusement and more than a modicum of let-live-and-respect.

Does the Pride Parade really need a viciously slanderous addendum to its open agenda of inclusiveness, acceptance, celebration? And why would gay pride organizers expect taxpayers to fund their celebration other than to help them feel comfortable about themselves in a spirit of genuine inclusiveness?

Why might those organizers feel that an even-handed response expressing its own sense of security and engagement with the larger community requires a hate campaign against another country, other citizens, who do them no harm, but who do support them?