Bar-Ilan University Compares Gay Pride to Pedophilia
Bar-Ilan University in Israel barred an LGBT student group from holding a gay pride event on campus.
The Tel Aviv-area university, which is public but has a religious mission and a disproportionately Orthodox student body, objected on religious grounds, according to a spokesman who cited the school’s “religious character” and the halachic prohibition on homosexual relations, Haaretz reported Wednesday. Bar-Ilan also refused to allow the group to publicize the June 22 event on campus.
Haim Zisovich, the university spokesman, said allowing a gay pride event would be comparable to permitting a program that encouraged pedophilia.
Omer Makhlouf, head of the LGBT Forum at Bar-Ilan, told the Israeli media that administrators on Tuesday denied his request to commemorate Gay Pride and Tolerance Month on the main quad of the campus. Makhlouf said he told the administrators that the group’s programming would be sensitive to the university’s religious character.
In refusing to allow the event, the Bar-Ilan administrators offered instead a program featuring a panel of university-approved speakers.
“It is tremendously important to hold a public event, since there is a very large number of students on campus who belong to the gay community but are in various stages of coming to terms with their sexual identity and coming out of the closet,” Makhlouf told Haaretz. “They don’t come to the group’s regular meetings, and they also won’t come to an isolated event that is held in a closed auditorium.”
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.
