CITY MUST FUND JERUSALEM GAY CENTRE

Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that the city of Jerusalem must fund a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community centre, reports YNet News.

The court criticised the municipality for refusing to fund the Open House centre and said it was discriminating against the LGBT community.

The centre had repeatedly requested funding and had been consistently refused by the city “under the guise of apparently objective criteria,” said YNet.

“The history of the relationship between the sides reveals that the appellant’s hand reaching out for support has met time and time again with the miserly hand of the municipality,” said the judges in their ruling.

Justice Amit added that a secular and democratic rule of law is what differentiates Israel from “most of the Mideast states near and far, in which members of the gay community are persecuted by the government and society”.

The community centre is run by Jerusalem Open House, a grassroots, activist LGBT rights organisation which also puts on the annual Jerusalem Pride Parade.

The city was ordered to hand over $120,000 to the centre and told that it must place the LGBT community in a “special status” category, as is the case in other Israeli cities, which will assist it with receiving community funding.