Christians, Jews & Muslims all agree: gay is not Okay

By Lee Russ

Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 06:13 PM

Unity at last according to the AP: Faiths in Jerusalem United Over Gay March.

Christian leaders condemned it. Jewish radicals put a bounty on participants. Muslim clerics threatened to flood the streets with protesters. Jerusalem's conflicting religions have found rare common ground: opposition to an international gay pride parade next month [in Jerusalem].

"We consider this offensive and harmful to the religious integrity of the city," said Sheik Taissir Tamimi, head of the Islamic court in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

"This group of homosexuals, we consider them impure," he said, calling on Palestinians to take to the streets to prevent marchers from entering east Jerusalem, where the holy sites are located. They "must not be allowed to enter Jerusalem."
...
Rabbi Shlomo Amar, one of Israel's two chief rabbis, wrote a letter to Pope Benedict XVI, urging him to issue a "strong, emotional, unequivocal statement against this terrible phenomenon."

"The evil are coming upon (Jerusalem) to desecrate its honor and to humiliate its glory with acts that the Torah despises and that are despised by all the religions," Amar wrote. "In addition, they also want to negatively influence babies, children and teenagers, to ruin them and bring them down the path of destruction."

The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party has submitted a no-confidence motion against the government over the parade, accusing authorities of not doing enough to stop it.
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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."

Archbishop Aristarchous, of the Greek Orthodox church, took a softer line, calling on "the sanctity of Jerusalem to be respected by them, and by everybody."

Wadiya Abu Nasr, a former Catholic Church official here and a commentator on Christianity, said he believed the gay community had the right to march, but suggested the secular city of Tel Aviv, which is much friendlier to the gay community, would be a better place to do it.

"One has to be not only just, but to be wise and not to be provocative. There are other places they could express themselves without directly offending anybody," he said.

Ahhh, the birthplace of the major religions, the fount from which Eastern and Western principles alike spring forth.  Several thousand years of scripture study and discussion to arrive at a single conclusion: gays are evil.

Who said human thought hasn't moved forward in great leaps?