Tuesday, August 11, 2009
News Vigil tonight for victims of Tel Aviv LGBT youth center shooting rallies Atlanta community
Posted by Patrick Saunders on Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 1:52 PM
An interfaith vigil is being held tonight at 7 p.m. at Atlanta's Central Congressional United Church of Christ in response to the Aug. 1 shooting at a Tel Aviv LGBT youth center that left 15 wounded and 2 dead, including a 26-year-old counselor and a 17-year-old girl. The shooter remains at large.
"The bullets that hit the gay community at the beginning of the week struck us all as people, as Jews, as Israelis," Israeli President Shimon Peres said at a rally last Saturday night in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square that drew at least 20,000 people. "All people were created in God's image, and all citizens have equal rights. All men are born equal, and every citizen has the right to be who he is -- to be free and proud."
Tonight's vigil, one of hundreds that have been held around the globe, will bring together rabbis and ministers from congregations across Atlanta as well as speakers from The Anti-Defamation League and local LGBT youth center YouthPride, to condemn the attack and honor the victims.
The parallels between what happened in Tel Aviv and what could happen here has resonated with many in the Atlanta community.
"It definitely opened my eyes," says Chase Tucker, 21, Community Outreach Chairperson for YouthPride. "To [attack] a center where kids are just trying to figure out what they want to do in life and where they want to go, but also figuring out their sexuality and if they're going to be 'the freak' in class? It's frightening."
"Absolutely, it would be like someone walking into YouthPride and doing the same thing," Rabbi Joshua Lesser tells CL. "Striking a gay youth center anywhere sends sheer terror to LGBT people around the world. For the Jewish world it's like someone walking into a synagogue and doing the same thing."
Rebecca Stapel-Wax, director of The Rainbow Center, a local LGBT non-profit affiliated with Jewish Family & Career Services, says, "I've kept on envisioning what this must have felt like, and I think that Jews and African-Americans and Latinos and so on can understand what that hate can feel like."
Lesser and Stapel-Wax hope that the vigil can bring together those within Atlanta's massive Jewish and LGBT communities, as well as those communities beyond.
"The hate rhetoric that is expressed about LGBT people fuels the environment where this kind of hate and and this kind of attack can occur," Lesser says. "People who are less hinged are going to take what was meant to be verbal accusations and take them literally, so it means that we're all in danger regardless of what position we hold."
"As a gay clergyperson, I respect that people have different religious beliefs about LGBT people and their rights," Lesser says. "But when we begin demonizing people, we abandon all of the values that we stand for, and [the vigil] is an opportunity to call for an end to it."
Stapel-Wax: "It's really important that if one group is attacked that we all need to stand up for one another."
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