... but LGBT rights are Human rights.
Really, really they are.
Matter the first, the Toronto Municipality is threatening to axe funding to the annual Gay Pride Parade because of one of the marching faction's politics.
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid is a group that correlates, quite rightly, Palestinian oppression and queerphobia under Israeli Occupation.
Now, regardless of what you think of their politics. Really, you can disagree with their stand, you can think they're wrong in everything they, you can even think that they're counter productive and do more harm than good.
Personally, I like them.
Canadian and US-aian Zionist Jews and their allies do not.
Ha'aretz reports:
The City of Toronto this month threatened to cut funding for its main gay pride event, following complaints by Canadian and Israeli gay rights activists who documented what they call acrimonious anti-Israel propaganda at the event.
Jewish gay rights activists from Toronto and Tel Aviv lauded the move, but the Toronto Jewish community's main body noted the city is yet to take any concrete action. Others, including prominent Canadian gays and pro-Palestinian campaigners, condemned the move as interference with free speech.
[...]
The decision by the city - which is among the world's gay-friendliest - came after repeated complaints by Martin Gladstone, a Toronto lawyer and gay rights activist, who made a film about QuAIA entitled "Reclaiming our Pride." In the film, activists at a Pride Tononto 2009 parade call Israel an "apartheid state" and one of them wears a T-shirt with a crossed-out swastika.
"How does demonizing Israel celebrate gay rights?" Gladstone said, adding: "It creates a hateful and exclusionary environment." Jonathan Danilowitz, a prominent, South Africa-born gay rights activist from Tel Aviv, praised the city's stand, which he defined as "going against hypocrisy."
[Elle] Flanders [the spokesperson for QuAIA], a Jewish filmmaker and artist who is also a PhD candidate in Toronto, rejected these accusations, adding that they were meant to "shut down the debate" and that she will "start a defamation suit against the next person who attempts to call us anti-Semitic."
It is extremely disingenuous to call a faction exclusionary and then shut it out of the parade. This may come as a surprise to some, but the Pride Parade is a protest march, not an assimilationist extravaganza. Or at least that's how it started, it's not about "celebrating gay rights", it's about showing how far we've come and how much more we have to go.
It is downright homophobic to pick and chose who you (Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Danilowitz) think is a "representative" of the gay people.
Israel goes out of it's way to present itself as "Gay Friendly", mainly by comparing itself to other Middle-Eastern countries in which gay rights are not as progressive as here.
Well, bullshit.
Seriously, bullshit.
When a campaign like
Out in Israel is being executed in San Francisco which is run by the Foreign Affais Office (whose minister is nothing short of a monster), the consulate, a bunch of gay cis men speaking and a token Lesbian, I call propaganda and the exploitation of my culture that erases the identities of non-Jewish queers (as there is nothing in that programme about Palestinian (with Israeli citizenship) queers, nothing in that programme regarding non-Ashkenazi Jewish queers, nothing about bisexual identities, nothing about trans identities.
The Queer Palestinian organisations Al-Qwas and Aswat have
called for a boycott Israel is cookie cutter perfect when it comes to gay rights.
So perfect we're even invited to speak at the Knesst in June (Pride Month)...
oh, wait:
In a letter addressed to [Knesset Speaker MK Reuven] Rivlin, titled 'Protecting the Knesset's dignity",[MK Ya'akov] Katz wrote: "I was shocked and amazed to receive an email invitation from MK Horowitz to attend an event at the Knesset on the subject of 'pride day'.
"Alongside the strange name, which symbolizes the opposite of any normal ethical value a human being should aspire to, all the more so a Jew, the possibility that such a provocative event will be held in the house of Israel's lawmakers should concern every member of the Jewish culture.
"Our holy Torah, the Torah of life, sees the world's existence in its normal and healthy form as a supreme value. Our Torah referred to what this conference is meant to represent as an 'abomination'. Within a nation which is a source of inspiration, our role is to be the pillar of fire lighting the way for the rest of the world's nations, which are watching us and learning from us," Katz noted in his letter.
Oh, and the murderer of the gay youth club is still at large and Social Security won't give the wounded and currently disables any allowance because the attack doesn't count as a "Terrorist Attack".
Regarding Toronto Pride.
You don't get to pick the "Gay Agenda".
There is no "Gay Agenda". LGBT Rights are Human Rights and to ignore the fact that Israel, while lauding itself as a Queer Oasis in a Desert of Homophobia (much like Zionism is called a Wall against the Barbarians, I kid you not) absolutely does not give a flying fuck about the rights of people living under military Occupation in the West Bank, under siege in Gaza or anyone who doesn't fit the image that Israel wants to send our to the world.
Pink Washing Israel violates me as a queer citizen of my country, as it is my culture being appropriated and assimilated in order to cover for the crimes committed in my name.
Fuck. That.
The fact that all something like the travesty going on at Toronto Pride, the utterance of MK Katz and the propaganda of
Out in Israel is proof that no ones considers queers to be anything more than a freak show for straights, who are willing to see us as
they see fit and not as we really are.
I'll repeat.
Fuck. That.