Unexpected Religious Lovefest in Jerusalem

The New York Times - Clerics of 3 Faiths Protest Gay Festival Planned for Jerusalem

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.

"They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable," Shlomo Amar, Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, said yesterday at a news conference in Jerusalem attended by Israel's two chief rabbis, the patriarchs of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches, and three senior Muslim prayer leaders. "It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it."

Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik, added: "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty. This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem."

How pathetic that fanatics of three flavours can only be united in mutual hatred. Its particularly sad, given that the sufis and the sephardim are often regarded as relatively soft and cuddly among the fundamentalists of their phenotype. What a desecration of Jerusalem. However, if these folk can perusade the pope and Ayatollah Khamenei to join them at a news conference at the Kotel, then I say we cede Jerusalem as an international city of united religious craziness and let them have their own private lovefest.