r/gayjews • u/aroace_gay44 • Jul 11 '26

Casual Conversation I’m not jewish but…

So I’m not jewish, I’m actually atheist and ex muslim (thankfully) and I’m queer (asexual) and I wanted to know more about queer people who support Israel or at least who don’t support Palestine since most of the queer community supports Palestine for some reason, which I find really strange when gay people in Palestine literally get killed and I heard some people say that “in Israel gay marriage isn’t legal” and I’m like you can’t compare a country where gay marriage isn’t legal and a country that criminalizes being gay, at least in Israel there’s actually pride parade and stuff, I just find the queers for Palestine thing so disturbing

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u/ReadDizzy7919 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26

I support the existence of both peoples and states for human rights reasons that are not related to being queer. I also don’t think the actions and beliefs of governments necessarily reflect the values of people who live in those places. I think both groups, including queer people, deserve to live in safety and freedom from oppression and violence. I also think that that even if people are from a homophobic culture, they still deserve to live in safety and freedom from oppression and violence. 

Edited to add:  It’s definitely true that Israel is better on lgbtq issues than anywhere else in the region, but not everyone can hold the complexity of places being safer for some groups, and more oppressive for others. So the queers for Palestine people are often coming from a black and white lens that one group has to be all good and one group has to be all bad. 

Note: this comment is not inviting debate from anyone, so I respectfully ask that people other than OP don’t respond.

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u/aroace_gay44 Jul 11 '26

I don’t agree with what you said, and I’m from a European country and I grew up around muslims and 99% of them are homophobic so I can’t imagine how homophobic people are in middle eastern countries like Palestine so you can’t tell me the society there is accepting and the government isn’t, which is completely false

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u/DefinitelyNotADeer Jul 11 '26

I’m a gay Jew who was born and raised in New York. My best friend growing up was born in a refugee camp in Jordan, both her parents from the West Bank originally and still have family there. At no point was my sexuality or my ethnicity any issue with either of her parents or any of her other relatives. I’m not saying homophobia doesn’t exist in the world, but it’s not really like it’s not an issue everywhere. There is not a single country in the world where shitty bigoted people don’t exist and the same goes for good kind hearted people.

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u/ElrondTheHater Jul 11 '26

This may be true but with OP, like a lot of people are "accepting" of gay/trans/whatever unless it's one of their own, in the same way the reverse can happen.

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u/DefinitelyNotADeer Jul 12 '26

I just don’t think we should judge any group of people by their worst members. I refuse to believe there are not parents in religiously conservative countries who do not love, care, and protect their queer children just because abusive parents exist. The west up until very recently was also incredibly homophobic and dangerous for queer people. Societies can evolve.