To addrs the subject of homosexualy and Judaism, we spoke to a gay Jew and had the followg exchange:
Contents:
- LGBTQ PRI MONTH: OY VEY, WHY ARE SO MANY JEWS GAY?
- “ARE THERE GAY JEWS?”
- THE GAY ORTHODOX UNRGROUND
- HOW N YOU BE GAY AND JEWISH?
- JEWISH EDIAN MODI ROSENFELD, A MASTAY FOR ORTHODOX DIENC, IS GAY. SO WHAT?
LGBTQ PRI MONTH: OY VEY, WHY ARE SO MANY JEWS GAY?
Nohels, the tradnal Jewish posn on homosexualy is still difficult for many liberal-md Jews, and the liberal nomatns have bated the extent to which gays and lbians n be fully tegrated to relig Conservative Halakhah and HomosexualyThe first and least ntroversial step taken by the Conservative, Renstctnist, and Reform movements was to endorse civil equaly for gays and lbians.
In addn, the Reform movement approv of rabbic officiatn at same-sex marriag and mment Denomatnal Approach on Ordag Openly Gay and Lbian RabbisDaniel Siegel, the Rabbic Director of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, has endorsed same-sex marriage specifilly bee he believ that hols should not be limed only to certa people and certa relatnships. Usg this as her startg pot, Rebec Alpert, a Renstctnist rabbi, has argued that the ernment’s refal to regnize same-sex marriage vlat relig rabbis wh the Conservative movement also ce the ncept of on ( which an dividual has no real choice) permtg homosexual sex. He wrote rponse to lls at the time to ncel the sodomy law (which was ultimately ncelled only 1988, thanks to Shulam Aloni) I, as an Orthodox Rabbi, Support Legalizg Same-sex Marriage We Sharpened the Assailant's Knife In Their Own Words Livneh was neher ultra-Orthodox nor Orthodox, but rather a Jewish natnalist, yet his ma argument was that homosexualy is foreign to Judaism, nstut a foreign fluence by generate Wtern culture and should be the op-ed he claimed that for hundreds of years Jews the Diaspora succeed prervg their muni om those “sexual perversns, ” or as he phrased : “It is totally absurd to have suffered for many generatns the Diaspora, while strictly prervg, nurturg and refg the heterosexual prciple, only to return to the Land of Israel and renew the ‘gentil’ abomatn’ here.
“ARE THERE GAY JEWS?”
”Love thy fellow man as thyself – but reallyDurg the past 100 years, some Jewish thkers set themselv a more amb aim: to prove that homosexualy is an tegral part of the history of the Jewish people and Jewish tradn. In the 1970s he was a pneer of the mpaign to ncel the prohibn on homosexualy Germany (Paragraph 175) the prohibn on homosexualy often relied on the prohibn Levic 18, Schoeps wanted to make clear the ntext which this prohibn was promulgated.
He might have been nsired a kd of msiah of the homoerotic gospel among the Jewish people had his unual kabbalistic theory not been silenced and phed to the his book “The Erotics of Kabbala” published 1923, Langer argued that “brotherly love, ” i.
The LGBT liberatn movement appeared only the 1970s, as an Amerin-style, secular, liberal is not necsary to accept the theori propound by Laner, Schoeps and others like them, but their attempts to create a Jewish homosexualy are particularly relevant now. Kameny’s Wiki b also stat that he was an Ashkenazi Jew, and this ma me wonr: Are Jews overreprented the gay muny jt as they areas of our society, such as publishg, televisn, news media, the film dtry, porn dtry, amia, the arts and bankg? Denise Eger, first female and the first openly gay Print of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California; March 2015 she beme print of the Central Conference of Amerin Rabbis, the largt and olst rabbil anizatn North Ameri.
THE GAY ORTHODOX UNRGROUND
Jewish adults intify as gay or lbian (4 percent) bisexual (5 percent); 88 percent say they are straight, 1 percent say they are somethg else, 1 percent say they don’t know and 1 percent cled to answer the qutn.
HOW N YOU BE GAY AND JEWISH?
As social attus toward lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr and queer (LGBTQ) people have unrgone a sea change globally, stanc taken by Jewish lears and movements have changed along wh, same-sex marriag are regnized by the Reform, Conservative, Renewal and Renstctnist movements, and each movement’s rabbil semary ordas LGBTQ stunts. All the chang were preced by the Renstctnist movement, which began beme the first movement to accept gays and lbians as rabbil stunts 1984 and whose rabbis have long been ee to officiate at same-sex while the liberal Jewish muny has shifted markedly on this issue, homosexualy remas a vexg issue Orthodoxy, which ntu to hold fast to the Torah’s seemgly flexible rejectn of homosexual acts. ” Many thori nsir this prohibn to be one of Judaism’s rdal ss and believe mt not be transgrsed even at the threat of one’s Readg the Prohibn Agast Homosexualy ContextEven the most tradnally-md terpreters of the verse acknowledge that the Torah do not prohib homosexualy as such, but merely one specific sexual act — generally unrstood to be anal sex between two men.
JEWISH EDIAN MODI ROSENFELD, A MASTAY FOR ORTHODOX DIENC, IS GAY. SO WHAT?
The biblil vers are also generally not unrstood as rejectg homosexuals as dividuals, but merely homosexual differ sharply along nomatnal The Reform movement was the first of the major nomatns to take a liberal posn toward homosexualy, adoptg the first of many rolutns on behalf of gays and lbians 1977. Conservative: In 2006, the Conservative movement nclud a polarizg bate over homosexualy wh the endorsement of two ntradictory opns — one upholdg the movement’s prev rejectn of gay relatnships, and another retag the Torah prohibn on male anal sex but allowg for other forms of sexual timacy between members of the same sex.
The Reform movement now nsirs same-sex marriage to qualify as kiddh — the rabbic term for betrothal, a holy unn between two 2012, the same three Conservative rabbis who thored the more liberal opn on homosexualy noted above published a seri of ruals and documents pertag to same-sex marriage ceremoni and divorce. Other Conservative rabbis, believg that gay marriage mt enjoy the same stat as tradnal heterosexual marriage, have sisted on applyg the tradnal marriage ruals wh only the most mor modifitns genred language. Though the largt Orthodox rabbil group, the Rabbil Council of Ameri, had at one time mend JONAH’s work, publicly whdrew s endorsement 2012, cg evince that the therapy was effective and had potentially negative the Orthodox muny still support nversn therapy, however, part bee they believe is impossible that homosexual sir uld be both unchangeable and proscribed by the Torah.
Israel has regularly touted s achievements on gay rights as a sign of s progrsive Wtern worldview, a practice some crics have rid as an attempt at “pkwashg” — that is, to distract om s treatment of the more on LGBTQ Jewish life, vis MyJewishLearng’s Khet blog. Kramer was a -founr of the massively fluential Gay Men’s Health Crisis, now one of the biggt AIDS service anizatns the world, but was forced out due to his nontatnal meanor and went on to found the AIDS Coaln to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.