Gay Gathering Puts Focus on Israel
Israel is the featured theme of the Equality Forum, a major annual gay gathering in the eastern United States.
The events in Philadelphia, from May 3-6, are featuring an array of Israeli gay performers and activists, as well as an address by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
The forum, which brings together a number of regional gay activist groups, features a country or region and its gay community as its theme each year. Israeli officials said the event will underscore Israel’s progressive record on gay rights.
“Israel serves as a lesson to others about respecting individual freedom and liberties in a land steeped in tradition,” Daniel Kutner, the consul for the mid-Atlantic region, told Metro, a local newspaper.
Forum organizer and founder Malcolm Lazin told the paper that in some ways Israel is “ahead of the United States, but in many ways, it’s to some degree held back by the influence of the ultra-religious community.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
