Sitting it out

Kudos to Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat (“Barkat slammed for sitting out Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade,” July 21).

Why do we have these parades at all? No one is stopping the alternative lifestyle of gays, so why must they flaunt it in our faces?

Jerusalem is the holiest city of the Jewish people. We must do our utmost to keep it so. What “pride” is proven with all these marches? JUDY PRAGER Petah Tikva

I really don’t understand Meretz leader MK Zehava Gal-On. Do we all have to agree with this parade? Do heterosexual people have parades? If Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat respects his fellow coalition partners, is it a crime?

Tell me, MK Gal-On, don’t you think it might be offensive to the Arab population of Jerusalem as well? I’m sure your party would be the first to say something if anyone offended these people.

So please, have some respect for your co-religionists, even if you yourself don’t believe in anything religious. JUDY FORD Petah Tikva

Your July 21 editorial concerning the LGBT parade in Jerusalem (“March on”) misses an important point: The participation of the mayor in such a parade suggests that the event is an official function of our holy city.

Members of the LGBT community (who are violators of Torah law) are entitled to boldly exhibit their views, just as those who desecrate the Sabbath (who also are violators of Torah law) might hold public parades. Yet neither merits the status of an official function of the City of Jerusalem.

We can show love and respect for all Jews without necessarily endorsing their views.

Also, your labeling Nir Barkat as an inciter puts him in the same category as the most extreme among the haredi population, and is as ludicrous as MK Zehava Gal-On’s implication that he is a political terrorist. FRED GOTTLIEB

Jerusalem

I belong to a small minority of gefilte fish eaters who like their gefilte fish cooked with pepper rather than with sugar. This is no great achievement on my part. I am neither proud of it nor ashamed of it; it’s just the genes I was given.

Does this give me the right to block up the center of town with a peppered gefilte fish pride parade and wave peppered gefilte fish under the noses of people who find it objectionable, and this at the expense of the taxpayer?

If the Jerusalem mayor sat out the peppered gefilte fish pride parade, would Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On say he had succumbed to culinary terrorism? DAVID STEINHART

Petah Tikva

Could someone from the gay community explain to us why they feel the need to march through the city every year, proclaiming pride in their way of life? Is one “proud” to be heterosexual? No. It’s a way of life. You either are or you aren’t. This has always been the main claim of the gay community, so pride does not come into it.

Apart from this, if you want to be accepted as a regular part of the community, a good start would be to show the same understanding for “the other” as you rightly ask for yourselves. Why deliberately trample on the sensibilities of sections of the population that feel hurt by something that offends their religious beliefs?

Come on gays, learn from history. The quiet revolutions are always the best! GRACE DAYAN Jerusalem

Thank you for bringing us up to date on the LGBT march in Jerusalem. Would you be so kind as to update your readers on the Heterosexual Pride March, the Jewish Pride March, the Short Persons’ Pride March, the Fat Persons’ Pride March, et al? SAM ROSENBLUM

Beit Shemesh

We are a democratic nation – just not like some other democratic nations.

We allow LGBT parades here and try to give everybody a fair shake. But we have to remember that we are a Jewish state, and that everyone is trying to kill us and take away our country.

Let’s remember who we are. We’re not America. We are the democratic State of Israel. BERNARD LITWIN

Jerusalem