A coalition of evangelical Christians from the United States and Israeli Orthodox Jews will unite together to campaign against the 2005 Gay and Lesbian World Pride Parade scheduled for this summer in Jerusalem, reported haaretz.com today.

An international petition is to be launched aiming to collect 1 million signatures against the parade.

"Millions of people around the world pray for the peace of Jerusalem and are heartbroken by misguided attempts to divide, inflame and sow disunity," said a statement by Leo Giovinetti, a pastor from California Mission Valley Christian Fellowship, San Diego, California, who is leading the coalition.

The last World Pride Parade was held in 2000 in Rome, Italy, where over 50,000 homosexual activists marched through the city. At that time it outraged the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope.

The Pope once commented, "In the name of the Church of Rome, I can only express bitterness for the affront to the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000 and for the offence to the Christian values of a city so dear to the hearts of Catholics throughout the world." He then stressed the Catholic Catechism which says that "homosexual acts are contrary to the natural law."

This time the gay parade will be held in Jerusalem, another major historically religious landmark city in the world, and evangelical Christians have accused the homosexual organisers of deliberately targeting holy places, according to haaretz.com.

"We are convinced that it is no accident that the last parade was held in Rome and that today Jerusalem is being targeted. Clearly the group's agenda is to create a provocation and thus offend religious sensibilities," Pastor Giovinetti said to haaretz.com.

However, the organisers have denied such claim and said the reason of choosing Jerusalem is because of its diversities in both religion and culture. Under the theme, Love without Borders, the organiser Jerusalem Open House, claimed that it wanted to bring out the message that the basic human rights to dignity and freedom of homosexuals should be respected beyond religious, cultural and ethnic boundaries.

The majority of Jerusalem’s 600,000 residents are either ultra-Orthodox Jews or Arabs, both traditional communities that oppose homosexuality. The highly controversial ten-day parade will take place in the city in mid-August and will attract homosexuals from all over the world.

The coalition of evangelical Christians is hoping the petition will pressure the Jerusalem municipality and the Ministry of Tourism to cancel the event.