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Homosexuality happens concretely in bedrooms, bars, basements, baths, and back alleys all the time. But once a year, custom has it, we all come out, and gather along San Francisco's Embarcadero, Berlin's Kurfürstendamm, or Montreal's Réne-Lévesque-- or whatever is the locally central spot that we transform into parade grounds.

WorldPride aspires to an even higher abstraction-- to be the gay pride festival of gay pride festivals, a symbol of global homosex. Sponsored by the InterPride, an international consortium of gay pride coordinators, the first WorldPride was held in Rome in 2000. The second, under the tagline "Love without border," is slated for August 18-28th in Jerusalem (www.gay.org.il/joh/eng/WPJ.htm). Some might say that's like scheduling a gay festival for Sarajevo in August 1914. But even if it all goes off without a shot or boom, WorldPride 2005 will be a gay pride event beset by terrible ironies.

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Every WorldPride seems to cause holy clamor. The first was roundly condemned by Pope John Paul II, who declared his "bitterness" over an event that he said was an "offense to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world." But the parade went off peaceably, as if shepherded by its own guardian angel. And last month, John Paul was struck down dead-- maybe punishment from the Goddess for his uncharitable words?

But even if that were so, the prospect of WorldPride in Jerusalem has conjured a feat even more miraculous: provoking a joint chorus condemnation from Jewish, Muslim, and Christian religious leaders in Israel-- including the country's two chief rabbis-- clerics who, instead of singing from the same page, normally hover at or near each others' throats.

"They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable," said Shlomo Amar, Israel's head Sephardic rabbi, of the WorldPride organizers at a press conference in Jerusalem in March. "It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it."

"We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty," added Sufi sheik Abdel Aziz Bukhari. "This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem."

Patriarchs of the Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian churches averred.

California calling

In an odd twist, the choirmaster for this hymn of ecumenical intolerance was Rev. Leo Giovinetti, pastor of the Mission Valley Christian Fellowship, an evangelical church in San Diego that meets at the local Sheraton. Giovinetti, who travels frequently to Israel and whose Rolodex bulges with contacts there, was catalyst for the interfaith press conference.

On Mission Valley's web page (www.mvcf.com), Giovinetti describes his lifelong battle with obesity. "When you're fat, when you've been at least 100 pounds overweight all your life, you develop a pretty sour outlook upon yourself," he declares.

Rev. Giovinetti's battle with the bulge is over-- thanks to some successful gastric bypass surgery. (The formerly rotund reverend endorses the "Rouen Y" technique. as performed by Pacific Bariatrics.) But his sour outlook, at least toward gay people, persists.

However it wasn't just anti-gay animus that got Giovinetti exercised at homosexuals converging near Christianity's ground zero. Evangelicals, such as Giovinetti, are so focused on Israel because their literalist Biblical reading says that Israel's reemergence as a Jewish state foretells Christ's Second Coming. And that means the really "final solution" of the problem of Jews, Muslims, practicing homosexuals, and other heathens, who, come the Rapture, will either repent or be killed.

While Giovinetti moniters Israel to see how close the clock ticks to Rapture's High Noon, a man in his Mission Valley flock-- who says that for many years he'd been homosexual-- keeps his eye cocked on something else: gay web sites. Surfing the internet, the man read about WorldPride and told Giovinetti, who sprang into action to mobilize Israeli political and religious leaders that he caught sleeping on the job.

But despite publicity money couldn't buy, there's no guarantee that WorldPride 2005 will be a success-- or even that it will happen. It's not that a fatwa from Israel's chief rabbis carries so much punch. Indeed, mainstream Israeli politics tolerates strains of explicit antireligiousity that would make Barney Frank blush. Jerusalem Mayor, Uri Lupolianski, who is ultra-orthodox, says he opposes the gay festival, but can't do anything about it, as permits for events are issued by the police.

The police, for their part, haven't said what they'll do, though for the past two years there have been small, local gay marches in Jerusalem that have transpired without more than some minor vandalism and hostile taunts. (Gay parades hardly raise eyebrows anymore in beach-loving Tel Aviv or Eilat.) With ten days of parties, conferences, and a film festival, WorldPride is bound to take place in some form, even without a march. Barring, that is, some regional crisis.

Parades & airstrikes

This summer, Israel and the Middle East are looking more than ususal like a powder keg, with Jerusalem the fuse. WorldPride is set just for the time when Israel will be pulling its settlers out of Gaza, over the opposition-- and some have vowed the dead bodies-- of Israel's religious-right. For now, it seems the risk of civil war-- seriously entertained in recent months-- has abated. But in March and April, rush-hour traffic in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem often ground to a halt with right-wingers blocking roadways with burning tires to protest the Gaza withdrawal.

In early April, Israeli police blocked right-wing Jewish activists from entering Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque-- a major Muslim holy site that has long figured in rightist plots as a target for desecration or a bomb. Given that Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to Al-Aqsa sparked the five-year Second Intifada, an Israeli terror attack there would mean mayhem.

In theory, Israel's Gaza departure should ease tensions with the Palestinians. But in reality, Israeli's hawkish Ariel Sharon-- who now risks assassination from right-wing fanatics-- seeks a withdrawal from Gaza only to tighten Israel's grip on the West Bank. Sharon has just announced new Israeli settlements just outside Jerusalem, strangling in the womb any future Palestinian state.

Thousands of Palestinains living within a short drive of WorldPride won't ever get the chance to go-- though their families may have lived in Jersalem for generations, Israeli authorities prohibit their movement out of the territories.

In April, the US State Department urged Americans to avoid travel to Israel. Perhaps they know something they're not telling about the timing of an Israeli attack on Iran, reportedly set for early summer. In so charged an atmospehere, lightning could strike anywhere. In scenarios not wholly farfetched, WorldPride 2005 could provide the cover or distraction for an act of violence causing a regional conflagration, or worse. It's perhaps the first gay pride parade that historians 100 years from now could be still be poring over, like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

Or, chaos being unpredictable, maybe WorldPride 2005 will go down in history as a miraculous irritant-- the grain of sand in the oyster shell of religious hard-liners that caused the pearl of peace to grow. It's nothing to count on, but starting from the unpromising ground of mutual distaste for marching queers, maybe the region's fractious Muslims, Jews, and Christians can grope their way to brotherhood.