Tel Aviv voted "best gay city"

Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. Leviticus 18:22

And Judah did evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins which they had committed, above all that their fathers had done.
For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree.
And there were also sodomites in the land: and they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the Lord cast out before the children of Israel. I Kings 14:22-24

And in the twentieth year of Jeroboam king of Israel reigned Asa over Judah.
And forty and one years reigned he in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Maachah, the daughter of Abishalom.
And Asa did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did David his father.
And he took away the sodomites out of the land, and removed all the idols that his fathers had made. I Kings 15:9-12

Jehoshaphat was thirty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned twenty and five years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Azubah the daughter of Shilhi.
And he walked in all the ways of Asa his father; he turned not aside from it, doing that which was right in the eyes of the Lord...
...And the remnant of the sodomites, which remained in the days of his father Asa, he took out of the land. I Kings 22:42-43a, 46

Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign, and he reigned thirty and one years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Boscath.
And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left...
...And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.
And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people.
And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove. II Kings 22:1-2; 23:5-7

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

The reader will note from the passages in I and II Kings cited above the association between sodomy and idolatry. Mister, we could use men like Asa, Jehoshaphat, and Josiah again.

If I were offered free trips (the only kind I can afford) to various cities in the world, Tel Aviv would definitely not be on my list. On the whole, I'd rather be in St. Petersburg, which recently passed a law criminalizing "public action aimed at propagandising sodomy, lesbianism, bisexualism, and transgenderism among minors"..

As reported by Ynet News, January 11, 2012:

Tel Aviv has been named the Best Gay City of 2011 in an international American Airlines competition selecting the most popular destinations among LGTB tourists.

The Israeli metropolis won 43% of the votes, leaving New York City behind in the second place with only 14% of the votes.

The top 10 cities also included Toronto, Sao Paulo, Madrid, London, New Orleans and Mexico City. Voting was held last month on the company's website.

The competition included additional categories, including Best Nightlife (won by New York City), Best Pride (San Francisco) and Best Sand & Sun (Sydney).

Tel Aviv, which was marked as a favorite even before the voting concluded, was described during the competition as "the gay capital of the Middle East, exotic and welcoming, with a Mediterranean c'est la vie attitude."

Shai Doitsh, brand manager of the Tel Aviv Gay Vibe tourism campaign, told Ynet shortly after learning of the results: "This makes us very proud.

"This is the peak of six years of activity and further proof that the decision made by the Tourism Ministry and Tel Aviv Municipality to invest in gay tourism and put their faith in the program we built was the right decision.

"This is an excellent start for the coming year of activity, in which we will continue to innovate and surprise, and mainly bring thousands of tourists to Israel," he added.

It's not to the credit of Israel that support for the practice of sodomy is seen as a good thing, as expressed in this nonsensical column by Giulio Meotti in Ynet News, May 15, 2012:

Israel’s ambassador to the US Michael Oren has been severely criticized for having boasted the Jewish State’s record on gays at the recent Philadelphia Equality Forum. Western gay activists and militant leftists were furious because Mr. Oren got it right: Israel is not a country that treats homosexuals the way the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world do.

Tel Aviv is a not only a holy emerald city for gays; it’s the only place in the Middle East where gays are free to walk hand-in-hand and kiss in public.

A few days ago, Iran hanged four gays from cranes in public squares (and this after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad previously said that “homosexuality does not exist in Iran.”) Saudi Arabia beheads homosexuals, the Taliban put homosexuals to death by collapsing a wall on them, in Gaza Hamas refers to gays as “perverts and mentally sick” and in the Islamic-oriented West Bank “immoral behaviors” are a good reason for torture.

Islamic law prescribes five separate forms of death for homosexuals. To these, the Palestinian Authority added several of its own. As Yossi Klein Halevi reported a few years ago in The New Republic, in Tulkarem a Palestinian homosexual was forced to stand in sewage up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a cell infested with insects. During the interrogation, police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle.

Israel has been in the forefront of granting protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. Some 300 gay Palestinians fled to Israel in the last 20 years.

Gay men are sort of a “canary in a coal mine” for what is happening to other minority groups in the entire Middle East. In that sense, Palestinian gays in Israel share the same fate of the Rwandan and Darfur genocide survivors and the Bahais in Haifa, where they fled from the Iranian tyranny.

The story of gay Palestinians sheltered by Israel is a phenomenon totally silenced by the Western gay community. That’s why last year Spanish gay leaders could ban the Israeli delegation from the largest gay pride festival in Europe.


‘Army of gays’

Last November, the New York Times ran an op-ed by lesbian Jewish playwright Sarah Schulman, who denounced “the co-opting of white gay people by anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political forces in Western Europe and Israel.” Veteran feminist Phyllis Chesler called it “the Palestinization of gay activism.” These days, the loudest chants of “From the River to the Sea - Palestine will be free” are coming not only from Palestinian loudspeakers, but also from the mouths of Western gay militants.

Like human rights organizations, gay activism seems to hold Arabs to a lower standard. However, there have been some liberals who spoke the truth. In a speech at the University of California, Berkeley, Alan Dershowitz said: “I support Israel because I support gay rights.” A progressive congressman, Barney Frank from Massachusetts, also worked to grant asylum for 40 Palestinian gays.

Even before the Intifada, ritual murders of gays were common practice in Palestinian areas. But only with the Intifada has violence against gays skyrocketed and become politicized. The murders were carried out by masked men from the refugee camps who saw themselves as “guardians of the Intifada.”

Meanwhile, in Israel a soldier is a soldier, regardless of sexual orientation. In 1993 then Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history, commented that “homosexuality is not a limitation to security.” Abu Odai, a coordinator of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, said that Israel will be defeated because it has “an army of gays.”

The Jewish State has made it a source of strength and homosexual soldiers are everywhere, at the checkpoints, in the trenches against Hezbollah and in the cyber-intelligence units. The film Yossi & Jagger recounts a love affair between two army officers who don’t sway or smile effeminately; they are just two men who discover that they love each other and guard a frontier outpost against those who behead gays.

One would be hard-pressed to find a country that oppresses its gays and treats its Jews well, or vice versa. From Nazi Germany to the Middle East, societies that persecute Jews will get to homosexuals eventually. Gays are the clearest proof possible that Israel is the only free oasis in the desert of fear.