Volume 48 Number 96
Produced: Wed Jul 13 6:08:06 EDT 2005
Subjects Discussed In This Issue:
Equal Rights for Gay/Lesbian People
[Leah S. Gordon]
Gay Pride (3)
[Orrin Tilevitz, Avi Feldblum, Jeanette Friedman]
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From: Leah S. Gordon <leah@...>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 03:45:12 -0700
Subject: Equal Rights for Gay/Lesbian People
Meir wrote, regarding gay congregants:
> ...they wanted their weddings announced in the congregation
> newsletter. I couldn't think of a compromise. I think it was asked
> that new baby announcements too refer to the two adults so as to
> describe their roles...
and Martin Stern wrote:
> What I cannot understand is why homosexuals have to publicise their
> sexual preferences. As people, I would treat them just as anyone else
> insofar as their sexual practices are irrelevant to the matter...
The problem with both of these posts (far more with Martin's than
Meir's), is that you are ascribing "sexual" content to facts of gay
people's lives that you don't ascribe to straight people's lives. For
instance, do you think it is "publicising [one's] sexual preference"
when you are invited to a male-female wedding or shown family pictures
or introduced to a spouse? Some people mistakenly view these things as
"pushy" by gays but "normal" by straights. It is that kind of
unfairness that does indeed characterize someone as homophobic IMO.
There is too much reluctance to give credence to gay families as
families. No sexual content at all there, just family structure
choices, from what I can see.
Basically, to the extent that you don't think about your straight
friends' sex lives, don't think about your gay/lesbian friends' sex
lives. Especially once all those families have children, and there is a
lot more to having a family/couple than sex, for goodness' sake!!
Probably the average family spends more time doing laundry than having
sex. :) How much do you think about their laundry practices?
Avi wrote:
> ...[gays/lesbians] are asking for what Meir refers to above. If they
> have established a relationship between two people, to be acknowledged
> as a couple. If they have a child, for that child to be able to attend
> a Yeshiva. The experiences I have heard from many of them (on a
> mailing list that was started several years ago to promote dialog
> between the straight and gay orthodox jewish communities) is that
> basic civil behaviour from the larger Orthodox Jewish community is
> often missing."
I could not agree more.
--Leah S. R. Gordon
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From: Orrin Tilevitz <tilevitzo@...>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 12:32:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Gay Pride
Avi Feldblum wrote:
> This group (religiously-observant homosexuals) does exist, and for the
> most part they are not asking people to accept sexual practices that
> are against the Torah. However, . . . if they have established a
> relationship between two people, to be acknowledged as a couple. If
> they have a child, for that child to be able to attend a Yeshiva. The
> experiences I have heard from many of them . . . is that basic civil
> behaviour from the larger Orthodox Jewish community is often missing.
IMHO, I do not think it is so simple. In what sense do you mean
'acknowledged as a couple'? If you mean an inseparable social couple,
in the same sense that two best friends with no homosexual relationship
or an intermarried couple are an inseparable social couple (so that, for
example, if you invite one to your home, you invite the other), I can
buy that, but I think this desire to be 'acknowledged as a couple'
generally goes further, a desire for acknowledgment that it's not so
bad, even ok, even though - or if - it is against the Torah. If I were
a synagogue executive director, could I permit them to become members as
a family? Or, as a gabbai, I ordinarily will give an aliya to anyone
who says he's Jewish, even if I don't know that he's halachically Jewish
and even if he's not shomer torah umitzvot. What happens if one half of
a homosexual couple to whom I give an aliya asks for a mishebeirach for
the other half (maybe that part is ok), and asks him to be described as
'baali', or maybe even 'yedidi' or 'ahuvi'? Or, what if adoptive
homosexual parents ask that their son be called up as 'Yitzchak ben
Reuven veShimon'? Or, if I invite the two of them to a simcha with
mixed seating, do I have put them on the same placecard? I don't think
I could do any of these things.
And while I have heard no convincing argument why parental misbehavior
ought to be grounds to exclude their offspring from yeshiva, if I were a
school administrator, I'd have to think hard about how to deal with
certain bureaucratic issues, like just who are these kids' parents.
The problem is that while gratuitous incivility is inexcusable, and,
IMHO, what people do privately is their own business, a male homosexual
relationship in particular is not merely 'against the Torah'; it is
halachically worse that Martin Stern's example of the ham sandwich -
which, as some apologists point out, is described as a 'toevah' just
like homosexuality. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't
it in the class of arayot, a yehareig ve'al yaavor? I think it's worse
than (1) a halachically unmarried heterosexual couple or (2) an
intermarried couple consisting of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father,
and maybe in the same class as (3) a Jewish couple, both previously
married in halachically recognized ceremonies and neither with a get.
So there is a limit to just how far 'acknowledgement as a couple' can
go. (incidentally, I'd be interested to know if there are schools that
exclude kids with homosexual parents but let in kids in these other
three classes, and if so, why.)
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From: Avi Feldblum <avi@...>
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 06:05:22 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Gay Pride
On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Orrin Tilevitz wrote:
> IMHO, I do not think it is so simple. In what sense do you mean
> 'acknowledged as a couple'? If you mean an inseparable social couple,
> in the same sense that two best friends with no homosexual
> relationship or an intermarried couple are an inseparable social
> couple (so that, for example, if you invite one to your home, you
> invite the other), I can buy that, but I think this desire to be
> 'acknowledged as a couple' generally goes further, a desire for
> acknowledgment that it's not so bad, even ok, even though - or if - it
> is against the Torah. If I were a synagogue executive director, could
> I permit them to become members as a family?
I'd like to clarify the situation I am talking about, and then hopefully
try and address some of Orrin's questions. I am talking about members of
the frum gay/lesbian community. These are people who are committed to
halacha and follow halacha for the most part. They, as individuals, are
gay / lesbian. That in itself does not say anything about their actual
practices behind closed doors. Some practice total abstinence, others do
not feel able to do so, but modify their practices to minimize violation
of halacha. On the lesbian side, it is highly unlikely there there is
any issue of an issur d'orisa at all.
Since these people are followers of Halacha, they do not claim that they
are married al pi halacha, and therefore items that are clearly related
to halachic marriage are not part of the discussion. What is part of the
discussion are those items that are part of the social fabric of society
that are associated with marriage. I'll also be upfront here that I do
not necessarily agree that we should accord all these items to them, but
the discussion on yes/no should be based on the real issues.
So to begin addressing some of your points, the comparison to an
inter-married couple has some validity in the discussion, but there are
also differences. The relationship is however, I believe, different from
"best friends" type relationships, but I could see some arguements
there. To your first point, our shuls typically have a "family"
membership structure. This means that two adults, with possibly
children, pay one membership fee and get one set of membership
benefits. There may also be a "single" membership option. The question
is how to treat a gay / lesbian couple. This is mainly a financial
relationship, and I can see good reason to argue that not offering
family membership rates to them is not treating them civily. I would
tend to agree that two single "best friends" should be treated as two
seperate memberships. The issue of intermarried couple gets into the
entire issue of how you want to deal with intermarried issues, and
whether you are going to allow membership for non-Jews in the shul. I
think that is a seperate issue.
I've run out of time this morning, so I may try and continue a response
tomorrow.
Avi Feldblum
<avi@...>
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From: <FriedmanJ@...> (Jeanette Friedman)
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 08:31:16 EDT
Subject: Re: Gay Pride
What I cannot understand is why homosexuals have to publicise
their sexual preferences. As people, I would treat them just as
anyone else insofar as their sexual practices are irrelevant to
the matter in hand.
It's really easy. It's because heterosexual sex is all that
heterosexuals talk about and brag about--from the birth announcements in
pink and blue, to the baby showers, the brissim and the baby-namings, to
the engagement parties and the weddings, all the time, everytime,
everywhere, it is inescapable. Everywhere you look, there are
heterosexual messages innundating society.
We say we don't advertise what we do, but we never stop talking,
looking, advertising and sticking heterosexual sex in everyone's face
24/7.
Examine it--even in frum households, it is clearly about all
heterosexuals and what they do (or don't.)
So what gays are doing is dishing some of that constant barrage right
back at the rest of us.
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End of Volume 48 Issue 96
