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.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
