Hiddush – For Religious Freedom & Equality is in Jerusalem
“The State of Israel … will ensure complete equality of social and political rights of all its inhabitants irrespective of religion … it will guarantee freedom of religion and conscience.” – May 1948)
The Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance is important in itself but is no less important as part of the existential struggle for the character of the State of Israel. It is a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.
Those who fight against LGBTQ rights and against the very existence of the parade in Jerusalem are the ones who seek to draw the entire State of Israel into darkness, substituting the values of democracy and equality with dictatorship and a theocratic state, and replacing the promises of the Declaration of Independence with homophobia and xenophobia.
Therefore, Hiddush would like to emphasize that unlike the fundamentalist minority and those who self-appoint themselves as God’s Cossacks – the majority of the adult Jewish public supports equal rights for the LGBTQ community. This is what we see in the many public opinion polls that we and others have conducted over the years. In one such survey conducted by the Smith Institute for Hiddush already two years ago, 73% of the adult Jewish public support same sex marriage (54%) or registration of same-sex couples as partners, and 74% support the right of households with same sex couples to receive the same rights and privileges that other couples are entitled to.
The combination of public pressure and the ruling of the Supreme Court led to the amendment of the law and the possibility for homosexual couples to use surrogacy in Israel like other couples. It is now time to take the next step and enable freedom of marriage and equality for everyone in all areas of life. (This serves as yet another reminder of the dangers of the “judicial overhaul” headed by Levin/Rothman/Smotrich and the ultra-Orthodox, and how important it is to protect the independence and authority of the Supreme Court.)
As we respond to the test that the State of Israel is facing, the bottom line is that we are all LGBTQ!
