Canada And Israel Remain Beacons Of Light For Gay Rights

But I only have to recognize what happened south of the border before the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states in 2015, to remember the hard-fought battles waged in other countries to acquire the same rights – not to mention other countries where homosexuality is still a crime, sometimes punishable by death, or at the very least, tortuous beatings.

The constitutional fights in the U.S. were tremendous.

Let’s take California for example, which went four different iterations of same-sex marriage laws, resulting in the on-again-off-again saga of Proposition (Prop) 8. 

By the time it was legal to marry in Florida, Denise and I had already been married six years.

In many countries—particularly in the Middle East—homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment or even death.

In fact, Israel stands out alone in the Middle East as the rare oasis of progressive thought on gay rights. While civil unions still cannot be performed in the Jewish state, marriages conducted anywhere else in the world are recognized there. There are several Gay Pride parades in Israel – most noteworthy in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. All have been postponed this year over COVID fears.

I am forever gobsmacked when the left-wing anti-Israel pro-BDS radicals selectively attack the Jewish state’s alleged human rights abuses towards the Palestinians – but completely ignore the fact that Israel resoundingly embraces gay rights.

Whenever that fact is presented to the radical hypocrites, they dismiss it as “pinkwashing.”

Still, you won’t catch anyone marching for gay rights in countries like Yemen or Qatar. Most likely gays will be living underground or trying to make their way to Israel. 

In Yemen, married gay men can face death by stoning; in Iran gay men have been hung. In Qatar, the prison sentence for homosexuality is up to seven years, while in Saudi Arabia first-time “offenders” face the lash.

Those are but a few examples of the tortuous ways gays are treated.

It makes my wife and I not just celebrate the fact that we live in Canada, but that our ties are to the Jewish state.

Forget about pinkwashing. It’s clear the anti-Israel radicals are in the business of whitewashing the facts.