There are progressives for whom gay rights is the single issue that determines their votes in domestic elections. Fair enough - human rights are certainly nowhere near the dumbest single issue that single issue voters choose. But its weird how the overwhelming priority of gay rights - what countries enforce human rights vs. where do governments actively sanction the murder of homosexuals - rarely penetrates leftist foreign policy thinking. Very, very weird:

At least 2,000 people marched Thursday in Jerusalem's gay pride parade. The event, which has repeatedly riled religious city residents and caused friction in the past, was mostly uneventful. Some two hours before the parade, police detained a haredi man for holding an insulting sign against the parade. Several hundred demonstrators protested the parade in Kikar Hashabbat, far from the event's route. Several dumpsters were set ablaze in haredi neighborhoods.

An insulting sign removed from the route and a couple of trash fires kilometers away from the marchers. That's just like what happens in that Islamic Republic with which foreign policy progressives have lately become so enamored:

Incidentally, how do you think the politicized gay rights groups on the left approach Israel in general? Do you think that there's something called the "Coalition To Boycott World Pride Jerusalem" that is insanely and pathologically anti-Israel? Because that would be revelatory. It would also be revelatory if Israel was granting asylum to the gay Palestinians who are fleeing from the Palestinian state that the international community is trying to set up in the name of human rights.

Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that actively enforces the human rights of homosexuals. The vast majority of the region - from the Palestinian Authority to Iran to Saudi Arabia [MR] - is on the other side of the spectrum. When their governments are only ignoring vicious anti-gay murders - that's a relatively good human rights day. The rest of the time the governments are the ones lashing or hanging or crushing to death their gay citizens.

You'd think that this would make the security of Israel a progressive cause, at the very least for the parts of the left that claim to speak for homosexual communities. But apparently there's some kind of sensibility on the left - some deep seated and almost visceral antipathy - that's preventing activist identity groups from gravitating towards their objective interests. Like I said: weird.

References:
* Thousands attend J'lem pride parade [JPost]
* Photographs To Help Explain Why There Are No Homosexuals In Iran [Content Warning: Graphic Photos] (Updated: Video Added) [MR]
* Treating Genocidal Fanatics Like Statesmen Is A Bad Idea (When Did This Become Controversial?) [MR]
* Israel grants visa to gay Palestinian [Pink News]
* Saudi Arabia Sentences Men To 7000 Lashes For Being Gay [MR]

Previously:
* In Contrast To Iran, Israel Has That Phenomenon Of Gay People
* IHT Publishes Repugnant Sophisticated Excuses For Legally Mandated Iranian Sexism
* Wilders's US Internet Provider Officially Nukes His Site - Because It's Just Too Interesting