The gay-friendly empire is striking back. A resistance is underway. An alliance has been formed between rabbis of all three major non-orthodox branches of Judaism — conservative, reform and reconstructionalist — and Jerusalem’s Gay and Lesbian Center to support the international gay pride parade scheduled for this August as a “‘basic democratic right.'” In supporting the controversial parade, these allies may take on the other surprise alliance that sprung up last month between conservative Jews, Muslims, Catholics and evangelical Christians who put their homophobia disapproval of homosexual behavior above petty theological differences. Explained one Team Rainbow rabbi, Ehud Bandel, “‘I come here in the wake of the strange coalition of leaders that was brought together by intolerance, extremism, and fanaticism,'” and others referred to the conservative coalition as an “‘unholy alliance‘” of religious leaders misusing their authority to support bigotry over justice. Team Hetero member, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, countered that the liberal rabbis were turning Judaism upside down and travelling “‘from holiness to paganism.'” Who’ll win the showdown is hard to say — the police are ultimately in charge of deciding whether the parade, planned for the same week as the Gaza pullout, will go on — but The Jerusalem Post seems to be leaning in the direction of public opinion — 3/4 of which is opposed to the event — by devoting the majority of its article to rebuttals from conservatives, and labelling a photo of past parade participants with the curious choice of terminology, “homo-lesbian community.” But perhaps that’s a cultural misunderstanding on our part, and in Jerusalem, “homo” is an accepted, unoffensive regionalism, and not a 7th-grade smear that’s unfit for use in a respectable publication.