Israel started its Gay Pride Month celebrations yesterday with Jerusalem’s Gay Pride parade. Tel Aviv’s march – the largest in the Middle East – will take place next Friday (June 12). Whether we “agree” or not with homosexuality, there’s a wider lesson in this for all of us. Here’s my own story (I’m not gay). And no, that’s not a misprint in the title. It does say “MEeting”; I’ll end this post with another “misprint” – something for you to look forward to….

In my early 20’s, I met a young woman (for the sake of her privacy, I’ll call her Toni). She was nothing like most girls/women I had ever met – very serious about religion and other social issues. We had many discussions, among other matters we talked about “feminism” – something completely alien to someone like me, a product of Jewish Orthodox education from 1st to 12th grade. After a month, she told me her not so secret “secret”: she was a lesbian.

Almost everyone spends all their youth growing up in much the same social milieu, even if they move once or twice to a different city. That provides comfort, for we quickly learn who’s who, how to behave, what is expected of us, and most of all: what’s considered “normal.” The downside, of course, is that such a milieu is a social bubble; we basically have no idea how other social groups and certainly different cultural enclaves live their lives and what they consider to be important or “acceptable.”

This is especially true and problematic for citizens of large countries and/or........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)