https://www.jweekly.com/2019/06/10/pride-function-in-s-f-holds-up-israel-as-a-special-place/
"A Wider Bridge"
The image of Israel as an open-minded haven for the LGBTQ community is one that supporters, both of Israel and of the LGBTQ movement, are proud of and are keen to publicize.
Leading the effort to promote Israel as a forward-thinking democracy and a champion of gay rights is the S.F.-based organization A Wider Bridge, which on June 5 hosted its first San Francisco-Israel Pride Reception jointly with the Israel Consulate.
“It’s important for us to support this community, and to support a bridge between the LGBTQ community here and in Israel,” said Shlomi Kofman, consul general for the past two years at the S.F.-based consulate that serves the Pacific Northwest. “Because the LGBTQ community is part of Israeli society. And sometimes some of these things are not reflected.”
Kofman and his wife, Sharon Vanek, hosted the event at their residence, with roughly 40 officials, donors, A Wider Bridge staff and friends of the organization in attendance.
Though yet to legalize same-sex marriage, Israel is the most LGBTQ-friendly country in its corner of the world, where gay and transgender people typically face ostracization and often legal persecution in countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Tel Aviv’s gay beaches, nightlife and exuberant summer Pride parade make the city a destination for LGBTQ travelers. As one Boston Globe writer put it — in a 2016 travel essay headlined “Welcome to Tel Aviv, the gayest city on earth” — Tel Aviv is “gayer than a Neil Patrick Harris pool party.”
At the gathering, Kofman cited new Israeli Justice Minister Amir Ohana and Matan Zamir, Israel’s incoming deputy consul general in San Francisco, as examples of prominent LGBTQ Israelis; Ohana is the first openly gay Israeli cabinet member and Zamir also is openly gay. Notably, Ohana, a Likud stalwart, is a hardliner when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that “being attracted to men doesn’t mean you have to believe in creating a Palestinian state.”
A Wider Bridge’s tagline is “Equality in Israel. Equality for Israel.” The organization was founded in 2010 by Arthur Slepian, a San Francisco economist and former financial services executive who wanted to build partnerships between the U.S. and Israeli LGBTQ communities, and to destigmatize support for Israel within the LGBTQ communities around the U.S. and the world.
“I wanted to create an organization that would bring our communities closer together, because I thought there was so much we could learn from one another,” he said at the event. “And I wanted there to be a voice in the world that said there is no conflict, there is no contradiction, between having pride in our LGBTQ identities, and pride in the people in the land of Israel…."