WorldPride 2006 Riyadh

We’ll resist the temptation to say we told you so, but we sort of did. As things have continued to heat up in Israel and Lebanon, ol’ Jerusalem was just getting to be too dicey for the week-long international celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people that was to be held there beginning Aug. 6.

The rumor is that everything is being rescheduled, even as we speak, for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “All that violence—you know, with all those Katyusha rockets crashing the party—is just so counter to everything that WorldPride stands for,” said Jerusalem organizer Ephraim Schwartz. “Obviously, someone needs a hug, but maybe right now is not the right time for Jerusalem. Maybe next year.”

Very quietly Schwartz and other WorldPride organizers from at least a dozen different countries have been working behind the scenes to find an alternative location, and they came up with one that’s bound to raise eyebrows all across the Middle East—the capital of the oil capital of the world.

“It’s a little-known fact,” Al-Jazeera reporter El-Mer Al-Fud reported yesterday, “that Riyadh has quite a rollicking nightlife and a club scene that just doesn’t quit. There’s nothing else like it. In this part of the world, it’s known as the city that never sleeps. Around here, if you’re bold enough to strut your stuff, it’s the place to see and be seen.”

“Yeah, baby,” said Saudi Prince Nik El-Bagg with a mischievous wink. “We be rollin’ out the pink carpet as an expression of our solidarity with our Western brothers and sisters in the counter-culture. We may have a reputation for being kind of on the conservative side, but don’t believe everything you read. We be the best kept secret in the whole Middle East thing.”

Stay tuned for further reports on this dramatic, if not startling, development. Just when you think you have the world figured out, will wonders never cease?