Taken from The Jerusalem Post

30.5.04  Etgar Lefkovits

Four days before Jerusalem's third annual gay parade, posters affixed in the city this weekend are comparing homosexuals and lesbians to child molesters.

"Mother, I heard that the bad people who sexually assault and sodomize children are holding a parade... Dad, Mom don't let them go out on the street, Help Me! I am afraid!" the posters, which are signed by the 'Organization of Mothers of Wounded Children,' read.

The organizers of the 'gay pride' rally, which is scheduled to take place Thursday evening through the streets of downtown Jerusalem, said Sunday that the anti-gay message in the posters only prove "the need" for the parade to take place in the capital.

"The assertion that there is a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia is similar to the accusation that Jews prepare the Passover matzos with the blood of Christians," said Jerusalem city councilman Sa'ar Netanel (Meretz), himself a homosexual.

Kahane activists, who are suspected of affixing the posters in downtown Jerusalem this weekend, threatened Sunday to disrupt the parade.

"This parade of abomination has no place in Jerusalem. In place of parading through the street of Jerusalem, I would send the participants for urgent psychological treatment," far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir said, promising to treat the participants at Thursday's event to a volley of eggs and tomatoes.

However in years past, despite police fears of possible anti-gay violence, most religious residents have largely ignored the event, and stayed away from the city center during the time.

In a largely conservative city, with a strongly religious and traditional make-up, Jerusalem had never hosted gay parades until three years ago.

Even the inauguration of the annual local parades - which drew about 4,000 participants each year - was the source of debate, with many religious city council members and a not insignificant number of city residents considering such an event inappropriate for the holy city.

Indeed, when the first local event was held in the capital in 2002 under tight police security, former Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert withheld city funding for the event, after failing to convince organizers to hold the parade in the more secular Tel Aviv, where it has been traditionally held for years.

The Jerusalem municipality was later ordered by the Supreme Court to pay the organizers NIS 40,000 for the annual event, in keeping with the amount the municipality contributed toward other city marches.

The executive director of Jerusalem's Gay and Lesbian Center, Hagai El-Ad said Sunday that the organization is still awaiting municipal payment from last year's event promised by Mayor Uri Lupolianski, and is considering further legal action against the city if the funds are not forthcoming.

This week's annual march -- and the continuing controversy surrounding it -- comes one year before a major international gay and lesbian organization is scheduled to hold its next world gay parade in Jerusalem, an event that could draw hundreds of thousands of revelers to the Holy Land.

The last such international parade, which took place in Rome in 2000, saw about half a million participants.

Organizers said that this year's event was simply a "dress rehearsal" for the major international gay pride event planned for Jerusalem next year.