Gays March In NYC’s Israel Day Parade

For the first time ever, yesterday gay people marched openly in New York City’s Israel Day Parade.

“Today for the first time in a long time, we really truly felt like part of the Jewish community,” said Mordechai Levovitz, co-executive director of Jewish Queer Youth, which organized 135 marchers. “It was big first for the LGBT community,” he added. His was the Jewish group to use the word ‘gay’ on T-shirts and banners, and he said the enthusiasm and turnout among the GLBTQ community was greater than even he expected. “We had 135 people in our group,” he said. “That’s amazing. I had 60 T-shirts, and I didn’t think I’d be able to give out even that many.”

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid protested the parade from a pen on Fifth Avenue. I’ll add more photos to this post when they come in.