Over the past week, Jerusalem has been covered with signs and leaflets denouncing the planned Pride Parade, and calling for people to demonstrate against it. The rhetoric has been extremely strong, and quite frightening, and I think it is important that you all see the words that most Israelis, and particularly religious ones are seeing every day. However, on the other hand, I was hesitant to write this article, because I really don’t want to assist in spreading their message. So, as a compromise, I have decided to put these translations of fliers that I have seen on the other side of the jump. You should be aware of just how fierce these attacks are, and for those of you who are in this country, if you care, you should please make your best effort to come to Jerusalem tomorrow to show your support for pride, for human dignity and for tolerance.

The following calls to action were distributed anonymously, on a flier, by the “Central Action Committee for the Cancelation of the ‘Pride Parade.’” It is important to note that I did not pick this flier up in a random chareidi neighborhood. Rather, I found it in the Chovevei Tzion synagogue, a modern, national religious synagogue, in the middle of the classy and expensive neighborhood of Talbiyeh.

To the lovers and servants of God that are in every place, and in Jerusalem, our holy city, in particular.
I heard a rumor that on Friday, the 19 of Marcheshvan, 5777, the licentious of our people are planning, God save us, to once again have a “pride parade” in the holy city of Jerusalem, and that thousands of disgusting people, who commit acts of Sodom and the generation of the flood, want to come to the palace of the King, to show and to prove to the entire world that, as it were, the King is not at home, there is no judge and there is no judgement, and that every man should do whatever he thinks is right.
A parade like this in Jerusalem is the clearest declaration of war against the Holy One Blessed Be He, the King of Kings, within his own house. Imagine for yourselves; if a parade like this would go through the holy city of Jerusalem, a city whose majority of inhabitants are considered faithful to God, and thousands of the perfectly faithful of Israel did not go out to physically stop them, and did not fill the Russian Compound, rather if those people at best would be bothered, and perhaps, if better would be satisfied with symbolic demonstrations. What a tremendous desecration of God’s name that would cause in this world, if they were to see that the King does not even have one real lover, that is prepared to sacrifice himself for the King, but rather that everyone is hypocritical, and that they only care about there own current world and world to come.
What tremendous wrath can be expected for the haters of Israel [an idiom for Israel itself –JF] if a desecration of God’s name like this should pass in the holy city of Jerusalem.
You must know that we are in the difficult period preceding the arrival of the Messiah. And Satan is fighting with all of his power, as he is about to be nullified. And the shell of Amalek, and the fiftieth gate of impurity are fighting self-sacrificingly, and against this, the Holy One Blessed Be He demands self-sacrifice for holiness and in such merit we will be redeemed. And this is the period of inspection, when the Holy One Blessed Be He checks every person to see if he is faithful or not. This is not a time for a man to sit protected in his house. Rather, everyone is required to love the Holy One Blessed Be He more than he loves his body, his life, his family, and everything he owns. If the weak says – I am a hero – and goes on his own, without care for what others do, and affects other people, without care for himself, and goes to fight the wars of our God with self-sacrifice, to physically stop the enemies of God that are trying to force their way into his house, then he will prevent God’s wrath from reaching him, his family, and all of Israel.

That was fairly typical of most things I have seen written. This second article, from the same flier, is remarkable, because here, the person writing it seems to actually understand what the parade is about, why it is happening, and still is opposed.

In approximately a week, on Friday, November 10, on the eve of Holy Shabbat “Va’era” [the name of the portion being read this coming Shabbat –JF] men who have sex with men are expected to come to Jerusalem, from the four corners of the Earth, to parade in its streets. It is worth remembering that in the portion of Noah, the reason for the destruction of the flood is, “And God saw the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth.” [Gen 6:12] Pushing the world towards moral chaos speeds up its return to physical chaos. This is what has happened in world history, and how much more so in the Land of Israel and in Jerusalem.
This disgusting act received, of course, the approval of the Supreme Court. Those same brutes, in their black cloaks, that prevent Jews from praying in the place of their holiness, on the Temple Mount, in order not to offend, as it were, the Muslims’ feelings.
There is a clear line that passes between individual sins, committed in darkness, without public legitimacy, and the situation wherein the deviant becomes an accepted norm. This is the line between culture and Sodom. It is this line that this evil group of deviants wants to destroy.
And so wrote Rabbi Isaac Lifschitz, “…the intention of this parade’s organizers is to create moral legitimacy for the abhorrent. We are not talking about the legal right to act abhorrently, but rather about a call to change the abhorrent into a moral act. This is a real ethical war. In the writings of the homosexual thinkers [Foucault? –JF] they demand acceptance in the public ‘discourse’ and not just in the courts of law. They are interested in being publicly exposed so that what appears to people as being unethical, will slowly, slowly be accepted as moral. This is a very clever war, and religious people are being drawn into the wrong debate – the debate regarding their right to be homosexual. Our war has to be against the parade itself. We can now allow it to happen in any manner, and we must fight against the phenomenon with all of our ability.”
The war against the parade is now different than the war for Gush Katif, the outposts, or any other orange demonstration. Perhaps, it is even more basic.