Jun 29, 2007  |  By: JAMES KIRCHICK  | COMMENTS     

JERUSALEM — THE FIRST column I ever wrote in these pages four years ago decried Gay Pride parades as bad for the gay community. They are “characterized by excessive, in-your-face sexuality,” I wrote, as well as “the unabashed display of sexual fetishes and other fringes of homosexual ‘culture.’”

That piece elicited more e-mail (both of the hateful and approving variety) than anything else I have ever written.

I was a 19-year-old college sophomore at the time I wrote the piece, and let me now take the opportunity to retract it and say that, for the most part, it was utterly sophomoric. For if there is an example of why Gay Pride marches are necessary and good, it occurred on the streets of Moscow last month.

There, a group of Russian gay activists, joined by members of the European parliament as well as the internationally renowned British human rights activist Peter Tatchell, were assaulted not for marching, but merely for attempting to deliver a letter to the mayor of Moscow requesting permission to march. The mayor has repeatedly refused to allow a Gay Pride parade to take place and recently referred to gays as “satanic.”

A group of neo-fascist Russians, chanting “death to homosexuals” and throwing eggs, descended upon the gay activists and behaved like the Brown-shirts of old they adore. A thug punched Tatchell in the face after the gay rights activist read a statement to the media and another kicked him twice while he lay on the ground.

Tatchell — and not the men who beat him — was then violently arrested by the Russian police along with 20 other gay rights activists. Throughout the riot, the police did nothing to protect the gay rights activists. One later reported that in the police bus on the way to jail, policemen were joking and said, “Don’t impose this on us, faggots.”

SOME GAY PEOPLE might not appreciate the spectacle of sexuality that are Gay Pride parades, and I still confess apprehension about what message certain aspects of the parade send to people supportive of gay rights but apprehensive about the raw sexuality that is always on display. But Gay Pride parades are ultimately about more than just men in Speedos. At least they ought to be. The parades are about telling the world — which, as the events in Moscow demonstrate, repeatedly needs the constant reminder — that gay people exist and are not going away.

Last week, I participated in the Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance, sponsored by the Jerusalem Open House, a major gay rights organization in Israel. Two years ago, an Orthodox Jewish man stabbed three participants in the parade, and last year Jerusalem police forced the Pride event to be held in an isolated stadium rather than risk the wrath of the city’s ultra-religious population.

This year, however, organizers were successful in lobbying the government to allow them to once again hold a march in the streets.

Luckily, there was no violence during the parade. But there were plenty of hecklers lined up along the streets, and a 7,500-man military and police security presence to avert any riots. The march was brief (progressing for only a few blocks) and lacked the garish colors, go-go boys and disco music that mark most Gay Pride parades around the world.

ODDLY HOWEVER, IT was the Pride parade in Jerusalem — a conservative city where gay rights activists have to do battle every year with the authorities just to hold their event — and not the ones I’ve been to in New York, an international gay capital, that was more meaningful on every level. Because of the severity of the march and the events surrounding it, the event last week in Jerusalem was far more serious and solemn and, in my mind, what a Gay Pride should be: a simple, respectful statement that gay people live in every community (even a city deemed holy by the world’s three major monotheistic religions) and deserve the rights that our common humanity demands.

Gay Pride parades, as festive as they can be, must ultimately not be about having fun, but about recognizing the serious plight of gay people around the world who are threatened simply for being gay. Gay Pride marches in New York and Jerusalem especially — given its proximity to the homophobic Muslim world — sends the message that gay people exist, have power and live freely.

The most important reason why we march is because we can while many others around the world cannot.