By scheduling a parade.
A gay pride parade.
Though it’s not exactly the unity one might hope for.
Christian leaders condemned it. Jewish radicals put a bounty on participants. Muslim clerics threatened to flood the streets with protesters.
Next month’s international gay pride parade in Jerusalem was intended to bring a sense of cross-cultural unity to a city torn by conflict, organizers said. It already has been wildly successful – just not in the way intended – uniting the city’s conflicting religions in anger against their plan.
“We consider this offensive and harmful to the religious integrity of the city,” Sheik Taissir Tamimi, the head of the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said Tuesday.
[…] There were threats of violence this year as well. An anonymous flyer distributed in some ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods Tuesday offered 20,000 shekels, about $4,400 (€3,450), to anyone who killed a marcher.
Tamimi called on Palestinians to take to the streets to prevent the marchers from entering east Jerusalem, where the holy sites are located. “This group of homosexuals, we consider them impure,” he said. “(They) must not be allowed to enter Jerusalem.”
[…] Three Christian Zionist groups based in Jerusalem issued a joint statement condemning the march, saying its choice of venue was intended to spur conflict. “It’s provocative, confrontational and it’s a PR move. It’s a gimmick,” said David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy, an Evangelical group that signed the statement. “It exploits what Jerusalem means to us. I don’t think it means anything to the gay and lesbian community.”
Yeah, there’s some disgusting stuff going on in Jerusalem — but it’s not the marchers.
Well…
Hate has always been a unifier, onless you are the target of the hate. Something I would have thought that all of those groups would have learned by now.
Actually, hate’s a good (well, effective) unifier for the group being hated, too. It just has some nasty side effects for all concerned.
I had been going to comment, but was rushed for time, about the irony of Jews and Palestinians being intolerant of another demonized minority group (and, heck, one can find plenty of Christian examples, too), but lessons like that tend to be, sadly, rarely applied to oneself.