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By MICHAEL LUCAS
Friday, May 04, 2007
I’m Jewish and gay and feel a strong sense of belonging to both groups. I certainly had to deal with a great deal of anti-Semitism and anti-gay bigotry while growing up in Russia. Lately, I’m disturbed that the world gay community is increasingly anti-Israel. It is more true in Europe than here, but even in New York, I have had heated arguments with gays about Israel.
How can gay people side with the Muslims who want to kill the Israelis? Conversely, how can gays so irrationally criticize a society that has done so much to accept LGBTers? Many of the anti-Israel arguments I’ve heard out of the mouths of gays are based on ignorance. Debunking that ignorance would fill another article. For now, I want to focus on gay rights in the Middle East. Israel is the only place there where they exist.
What can I say to get this through certain people’s very thick skulls? To cite one example only: In 2004, a student at The American University in Cairo put a personals announcement on a gay dating site. For that, he was sentenced to 17 years in prison, including 2 years of hard labor. He was accused of “offences to the public good, the honor of society, and contempt to moral principles and social tradition.” Now there’s something for a European or American gay to protest. It totally escapes me how gay people can side with burqa-wearing, jihad-screaming, Koran-crazed Muslims.
I’VE BEEN INVITED to Israel four times the past three years to perform in gay clubs. Gay life is actually more open in Israel than the United States. The Israeli military doesn’t have our embarrassing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Israel also has Donna International, a widely popular transsexual pop star. The Israeli people chose her to represent the country in Europe’s largest singing competition; Eurovision. She brought home the title, too! In Tel Aviv, gay men walk hand in hand with each other. The very provocative posters announcing my sex shows were displayed up and down Ben Gurion Street, the equivalent of Madison Avenue.
I have traveled to other Middle Eastern countries including Jordan, Syria and the U.A.E., all historical enemies of Israel. Homosexuality is against the law in Syria. Article 354 of the Federal Penal Code of the UAE says: “Whoever commits rape on a female or sodomy with a male shall be punished by death.” In Jordan, journalists work under a criminally enforceable duty to respect the “values of the Arab and Islamic nation.” One of those “values” is to murder gay family members and call the murders “honor killings.” Shariah Law actually says that if a married person engages in a homosexual act, he/she is to be stoned to death. This is true for all Muslim countries following Shariah Law.
So why does the gay community so often voice support for Muslims? Why does it forgive them for practically everything they do, but forgive Israel for nothing? Is it a lack of common sense, or perhaps of knowledge? Or is it pure anti-Semitism?
Is it anti-Semitism that does not allow many in the gay community to understand that it isn’t Israelis blowing themselves up in busy restaurants, not Israelis who flew jets into the twin towers, not Israelis rioting over cartoons and not Israelis jailing or even beheading people for making love to whomever they want? It is not the Israelis; it is the sons of Allah who are behind almost every terrorist act in the world today.
By contrast, Israel’s record on gay rights is commendable. Israel offers gay people the option of common-law marriages. In November, 2005, an Israeli court ruled that a lesbian spouse could adopt a child born to her partner by artificial insemination. If you as a gay person get married in Massachusetts, Israel will recognize your marriage if you go live there. Young people in Israel can seek exemption from the military by volunteering for a national service, among which is included The Association of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgenders in Israel. Gay partners of El Al employees are entitled to the same free ticket policies as heterosexual partners, not bad for a country that has only been in existence for 60 years and lives with the reality of ongoing terror. I can’t imagine that any other nation that would maintain its civil liberties under such circumstances.
Nonetheless, you have European cicadas buzzing about Israel being a brutal country that always violates U.N. decisions. They do not buzz about Hezbollah’s failure to disarm and most of these cicadas have never even been to Israel. Paradoxically, if they did go there with their unfounded hate speech, they would be at liberty to say whatever they pleased. But if they went to any Arab country and spoke in favor of gay rights … well, let’s just say they would be slaughtered like animals.
THERE ARE SOME anti-gay religious extremists in Israel (just as in any country), but they don’t have the law of the land on their side. In January of this year, Binyamin and Avi Rose were registered as a gay couple in the official record books of Jerusalem. They brought their case to an Israeli court after being disturbed by the anti-gay religious demonstrations of the previous summer; the court found in their favor.
Unfounded attacks against Israel are sometimes called “Israel bashing.” My conclusion is that gays engaged in that bashing are doing it because of deeply-rooted anti-Semitism. After the Holocaust, anti-Semites felt they could no longer say “I hate Jews” in public. But they retained their anti-Semitism, and making ill-reasoned, unlimited attacks against Israel is the form that bigotry has taken. Gays, of all people—who understand what it is to be historically oppressed and unrecognized, not to mention bashed—should know better.
Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com.
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