A university in Israel has apparently blocked a student Pride event, and compared it to celebrating paedophilia.

Bar-Ilan University reportedly blocked a student Pride event, comparing it to celebrating paedophilia.

In a meeting with the university’s LGBT group, the school dean said they could instead hold “a respectable event in which there are various speakers, such as psychologists and rabbis, who can offer the participants help.”

University spokesman Haim Zisovich said: “The university has a religious character and homosexual relations are forbidden in Jewish law.

“Holding a demonstration is saying that we are in favour. On the contrary, and don’t misunderstand me, but if a group were to come and say ‘We believe in paedophilia, in allowing sex with minors, and we want to hold a happening’

“Any call to break the law is problematic and these are the laws of the Torah. Just think what would happen if a religious university were called upon to hold an event for some organization that calls for a certain law to be broken.”

Head of the LGBT group, Omer Makhlouf, said: “It is tremendously important to hold a public event, since there is a very large number of students on campus who belong to the gay community but are in various stages of coming to terms with their sexual identity and coming out of the closet.

“The fact that there is a gay students group at Bar-Ilan is important in itself, but it’s no act of charity on the part of the university, when there are other groups – political and non-political – that operate and hold public events without any hindrance or interference from the university.”