LGBT activists are organizing to attend a panel in the upcoming Jerusalem Conference – sponsored by the haredi-Zionist Besheva Magazine – that will discuss the way rabbis and educators should deal with homosexuality. While they claim that they do not plan to disrupt the panel – this is far from certain, given the fact that LGBT activists have disrupted numerous Jewish Home events in the current election season, in protest of the party's position against recognizing a union between LGBTs as “marriage.”
The Jewish Home and Besheva are both associated with the religious-Zionist public, whose leaders do not condone homosexuality, despite increasing pressure to do so.
One of the panelists will be a representative of Bat Kol – an organization of religious lesbians. The LGBTs say they will be present in order to support her.
The panel, scheduled to be held this Monday at the Jerusalem Crowne Plaza Hotel, was originally named “Is Conversion Treatment a Desirable Solution for People with Same-Sex Tendencies?”, and was to include MK Shelly Yechimovich (Labor).
Yechimovich bowed out, however, after LGBTs protested the panel's name and the idea that treatment can and should be used to alter a person's sexual tendencies.
The Open House, an LGBT center in Jerusalem, posted on its Facebook page that “In response to the biased panel on conversion treatment, the Open House will fund tickets to the conference for whoever wants to go there, so that we can create a presence of a vibrant KGBT crowd.
"We are not going there to crash or disrupt the discussion, but to give backing to the representative from Bat Kol. Now – the only thing left to do is to register, before the tickets run out. So register yourselves and bring others, too.”
Other LGBT pages also advertised the plan.