By Christopher Cappiello

EuroPride Parade Draws 750,000 in London

EuroPride, the annual European festival of gay pride that is held in a different capital city each year, capped its two-week 2006 London stay with a July 1 parade that organizers say attracted three quarters of a million people.

“It shows to the world what London is, the world’s most diverse, gay-friendly city,” Jason Pollock, chief executive of EuroPride 06, told the BBC. “What this shows as we march through the city of London—one of the greatest cities on earth,” said London Mayor Ken Livingstone, “is a city can be a wonderful place to live in with people of every race, religion and sexuality.”

The parade route went along Oxford and Regent streets to Piccadilly Circus and ended with an enormous rally in Trafalgar Square. EuroPride was the first gay pride celebration in London since Great Britain’s civil partnership law went into effect last December, allowing same-sex couples to form legal unions with many of the benefits and protections of marriage.

Since the British government lifted its official ban on LGBT service members in 2000, members of the army and air force have marched in gay pride parades, but the EuroPride parade was the first to feature Royal Navy personnel marching in uniform. “To be quite honest, it’s a dream come true,” Petty Officer Karen Surtees, one of the 22 naval personnel marching, told the BBC.

The parade followed two weeks of exhibitions, sporting events, films, and theater events drawing performers and athletes from across Europe. On the last night of the festival, Saturday, July 2, EuroPride culminated in an ambitious show at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall with an all-star lineup of talent including Stephen Fry, Elton John, Graham Norton, Billie Jean King, the London Gay Men’s Chorus and performances by the West End casts of Chicago and Mamma Mia. The evening was organized by out actor Sir Ian McKellen, who was recently named the most influential gay Brit, topping Elton John on the annual “Pink List,” according to the Daily Mirror.

“It was a fantastic night,” Sir Ian told the Evening Standard about the Royal Albert Hall show, “and a sentimental occasion when our little group took over the nation's concert hall for a night. I think feeling better about oneself is a good use of theater.”

EuroPride 2007 is scheduled for June 30-July 2 in Madrid, Spain.

Good News and Bad for Jerusalem’s WorldPride

The WorldPride celebration scheduled for Aug. 6-12 in Jerusalem has weathered many attacks and attempts to have it cancelled by an unusual coalition of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religious leaders, including some Americans.

“This is not homo-land, this is the Holy Land,” said New York Rabbi Yehuda Levin in a press conference on July 2, according to Agence France Press, repeating a phrase he has used for more than a year to denounce the international gay pride event. He also referred to the event as “the spiritual rape of Jerusalem.”

Holding WorldPride in Jerusalem is “a provocation and a declared mockery of all that is precious and sacred in the Holy city of Jerusalem in the eyes of the entire world,” according to a petition circulated by Jerusalem City Councilmember Mina Fenton.

“Levin´s use of religion as a weapon of bigotry and violence is offensive to all who care about God and religion and morality,” said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, the North American co-chair of WorldPride. Kleinbaum is head of New York’s Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the largest LGBT and Allied synagogue in the world.

In a piece of good news for WorldPride, a Jerusalem district court ruled May 29 that the city of Jerusalem must pay $77,000 to Jerusalem Open House, the city’s leading LGBT rights organization and organizer of WorldPride. The court ruled that the city discriminated against JOH for three years by denying municipal funding granted to other community organizations.

“Even if municipal officials have a hard time accepting the [LGBT] community, and believe this is an unwanted phenomenon, the municipality cannot veer off from fundamental principles and ignore this community,” wrote District Court Judge Judith Tzur in her ruling, according to a WorldPride statement. The ruling ended a three-year legal battle between JOH and the conservative administration of the city’s Orthodox mayor, Uri Lupolianski.

Vatican Fears Gay Lawsuits

A cardinal in a high-level Vatican position told an Italian news magazine that he fears the church is on a collision course with European governments over issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, and stem cell research that could eventually lead to international court cases.

“We worry especially that, with current laws, speaking in defense of life and the rights of families is becoming in some societies sort of a crime against the state,” Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, said to Famiglia Cristiania, according to The Associated Press. “The church is at risk of being brought before some international court if the debate becomes any tenser.”

Lopez Trujillo organized the Roman Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families in Valencia, Spain, July 1-9, and his remarks were widely seen as a prelude to a strong reiteration of the church’s position on social issues at the Valencia event. A Colombian cardinal, Lopez Trjuillo caused an uproar in 2003 for claiming that condoms did not prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS and, in fact, contributed to infections by creating a false sense of security,

“I cannot fathom a religious organization being punished for speaking its belief against abortion or gay marriage,” Chai Feldblum, a legal scholar at Georgetown University’s Law Center and longtime gay rights advocate, told the AP. “What is illuminating is not the reality of the legal penalties they face, but an acknowledgment that public morality is shifting under their feet.”