Michael.

Jewish push for marriage

Posted on 17 June 2011

A new group is hoping to energise Jewish support for same-sex marriage following a statement supporting marriage equality by Progressive rabbis.

“We, the members of the Moetzah, the Rabbinic Council of Progressive Rabbis of Australia, Asia and New Zealand, support marriage equality under Australian law,” the Council wrote in May, writing that Progressive Judaism believes all people are created in God’s image and are therefore entitled to full equality.

In response, Roy Freeman, president of Sydney Jewish GLBT group Dayenu, has formed J4ME — short for Jewish community supporting Marriage Equality — for Jews who support marriage equality, regardless of denomination or sexual identity.

Freeman said he wanted to build on the work of people like Australian Marriage Equality national convenor Alex Greenwich and PFLAG national spokeswoman Shelley Argent.

“A lot of people in the Jewish community support marriage equality but don’t see it as their issue so they don’t get involved with the lobbying,” Freeman said.

“I want to change that. I want to make sure it’s a conversation that is being had within the Jewish community and I want to raise the profile of the lobbying that is going on and encourage people to write to their MPs and senators.

“We’re on Facebook and in the process of setting up a website, J4ME.org.au, and we hope to organise some events in the near future to discuss marriage equality and spread the word and get more people involved.”

Freeman said he had been thinking about the idea for several months while working with the Progressive rabbis on the statement.

“It was an amazing statement and I’m very proud of the work they’ve done,” he said.

The Orthodox Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia responded to the Progressive statement by reaffirming its opposition to same-sex marriage, but Freeman said he personally knew Orthodox rabbis who supported marriage equality.

“Unfortunately, because of their role they’re not willing to speak out publicly but on a one-to-one basis they say how supportive they are but they don’t feel they’re in a position to break the trend, if you like.”

Melbourne-based Aleph convenor Michael Barnett said he would support the group.

“I am supportive of this and want to be involved to help advocate for marriage equality within the Jewish community,” he told the Star Observer.

Barnett said he believes a move to allow same-sex marriage in Australia would receive support from the wider Jewish community.

“There will be zero support from the strictly Orthodox, or more extreme members, from the Jewish community,” he said.

“I believe there would be a large amount of support from the bulk of the Jewish community who are not strictly Torah religious.”
info: http://www.facebook.com/J4ME.AU

Nonetheless, since Judaism’s stance is that the purpose of the marriage is to procreate in a holy fashion, I doubt that same-sex marriage will be allowed in the near future as a religious option.

Two female friends of mine, both Jewish, have been living together for over 15 years now. Each have given birth to a child in recent years. This would make their children Jewish. Both are legal parents of each child.

Kindly justify your position on same-sex marriage based on what you have written above.

Michael.

I’m guessing that by the time we get to the Talmud the gestalt shifts from the attitude of the Bible to one that is likely to see homosexuality as “inherently” abhorrent for a society, to the point of invoking God’s wrath. For instance:

[Chulin 92a] (Ula): These are the 30 Mitzvos that the Nochrim accepted on themselves; they only keep three (Maharav Ransborg gives references discussing the 30 Mitzvos): (92b) They do not write Kesuvos for homosexual couples; they do not sell human flesh in the market; they honor the Torah.

http://dafyomi.co.il/chulin/points/ch-ps-092.htm

If I might add an historical caveat to my argument (although it’s certainly not my intention to soften my own point), we also only know of certain dietary laws from Leviticus, and yet the archaeological evidence testifies to the fact that ancient Israelites did not raise pigs. In fact, one of the ways in which archaeologists have identified Israelite settlements is by the absence of pig bones. Maybe they also had a problem with homosexuality? The reality is, we have no way of knowing.

My concern here has really been less to do with what the ancient Israelites may have thought, and more to do with the fact that Biblical conservatism should get out of politics and back into the churches and synagogues where it belongs. The fact that so little of it is grounded in a literal reading of the Hebrew Bible (sans Mishna, sans Talmud, sans Pauline Epistles, etc) is only further grist for the mill. I don’t mind Orthodox Judaism’s exclusion of homosexuality (which is source-based and consistent) anywhere near so much as I am bothered by their exclusion from Australian civil marriages, which should not have anything to do with religious conviction.

And, just as we don’t check male-female bedrooms to see whether they have been having sex during niddah, so too, nobody should check male-male bedrooms.

Nonetheless, since Judaism’s stance is that the purpose of the marriage is to procreate in a holy fashion, I doubt that same-sex marriage will be allowed in the near future as a religious option.

Luckily for me, I am part of the fortunate majority. My sexual preferences will not impinge upon my right to live my life with whom I choose. But who am I to decide what everybody else should do? Even if the Torah is the unmediated and unaltered word of the divine: what gives me the right to enforce it upon others?

I realise that you are only trying to justify the Biblical basis for the halakha, and I apologise if it seems that I am taking your comments out of context. I do still disagree with you as regards how strongly the Torah (indeed, the Bible in general) speaks out against this particular issue, but my main beef is with what that means for us today. While religious Jews would not antagonise those who, for personal reasons, choose not to procreate (indeed, there is a small community of Satmar Hassidim in Jerusalem who fall into this category, and devote their lives to Torah instead), they do often antagonise homosexuals. While they would have no problem with somebody who marries another person who is incapable of reproduction, they do have a problem with those who choose to live their lives with a partner of the same sex.

Truthfully, I think this whole business has less to do with the ability to reproduce, and more to do with something that people find disgusting.

People take issue with what by today’s western society are overly draconian and talibanesque punishments for the offences in Leviticus 18 & 20. Is this justification for throwing out the prohibitions themselves? At the very least, the punishments are an indication of their relative severity.

In both sections, the theme is clearly the family as a fundamental building block of society. The Torah puts homosexuality on par with all of the others for this reason.

(As an aside, what’s so bad about incest? If two people love each other … Why is that still considered a “taboo” but homosexuality isn’t?)

You may not consider “be fruitful and multiply” a positive commandment, but all those who count the 613 mitzvot do, and the threat of extinction was predicated on a big “IF”. However, it is exactly this possibly slippery slope that those against gay marriage want to guard against.

Everybody has choices; that is what distinguishes humans from animals.

This post is about the Judeo-Christian values system that underpin Australian society, and its position regarding gay marriage. My point was to establish a clear link between the messages in the Torah and that position.

You describe Leviticus 18 as “timeless and independent of society at any time”. For the most part, this pericope reflects the incest taboo, along with a small variety of other sexual transgressions, so arguing for its continued applicability might seem harmless. Would you suggest the same in relation to Leviticus 20, which also makes reference to the abominable practises of the Canaanites? I should hope not, for Leviticus 20 suggests that participants of sexual transgressions (including homosexual activity) should all be summarily executed. In fact, Leviticus 20 even says that a person who insults his parents should be put to death, so I am forced to reiterate: what makes you think that homosexuality was worse than other crimes that mandated similar penalties?

I would suggest that it is only a particularly nasty sort of person who would want to live in the sort of world mandated by the book of Leviticus, and that it is for that reason that our Rabbis went to such glorious extremes to soften the blow. Just as some other contemporary sects perceived the Rabbis to be unjustifiably lenient (which was, according to Josephus, the reason for the Pharisees’ popularity with the people), so too are further steps in the same direction denigrated today.

It is debatable whether “Go forth and multiply” constitutes a binding commandment, or a blessing (it is also, after all, given to the animal kingdom), so I’d not take that prescriptively myself. And I also wouldn’t get so frightened about the threat of human extinction. I don’t personally believe in this 3-pronged fork of sexuality, but those who have an exclusive attraction to the same sex (what we are here referring to as “gays”) don’t constitute 50%, so the argument that our world would be in sorry shape if they did is not much of an argument.

At the end of the day, nobody chooses (nor has ever chosen) their sexuality. The question is really not whether it is right or wrong to feel for people the things that we feel, but whether or not living in a committed relationship under the auspices of Australian law is an inalienable right. Personally, I think that it is.

If we look further, we can note the difference between this and most other prohibitions: gay sex is deemed an “abomination” – a qualification used for only a small number of the many “do not”s in the Torah, including such things as incest and beastiality.

The context of the section of the Torah (Leviticus Ch. 18) is the presentation of a moral code that is timeless and independent of society at any time, and prohibits certain practices that it identifies as those of corrupt society. This is indicated in the prelude to the list of these prohibitions: “k’maaseh eretz mitzrayim” – “do not follow the actions of the land of Egypt”.

The next place to look is the first mitzvah in the Torah – “be fruitful and multiply”, and another similar injunction in Job: “the world was not created to become desolate, rather to be settled”. These two verses reflect God’s desire to have an inhabited world where people procreate and continue life. Since the dawn of time, this has happened through the process of a man and woman cohabiting (usually once married or in a committed relationship) and producing offspring. People refer to this as the “natural order” (which you quickly dismiss) – perhaps a better term would be “God’s world order”.

All of these together form the biblical basis for the implied prohibition against gay marriage. The primary objection is that it flys in the face of the world order/rules for society prescribed by the Torah. Being a gay couple is substantially incompatible with “be fruitful and multiply” (IVF notwithstanding). If the gay population were 50% instead of 10%, then there wouldn’t be much left in a few generations.

I don’t know of any Torah prohibition against a man “loving” another man – love is an emotion. David and Jonathan shared an emotional bond described as love. Indeed, Ethics of the Fathers describes their love as one that is “not tethered to something else” (as opposed to physical lust between Amnon and Tamar). In spite of this love, they both separately married women and had families to fulfil their obligation to maintaining the world order.