Gay avek!

I saw an article this afternoon on Jpost, and I thought I'd blog about it a bit. Here, first, is the article in full, by David Benkof.

With the High Holy Days coming up, I thought I would offer my own Rosh Hashana drash with reference to my fellow gay men and Torah Judaism.

Many gay and lesbian Jews have argued that since God made them gay, He must certainly want them to express that sexual orientation in their family and bedroom lives. Even Steve Greenberg, who has rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University, has made this argument. Now, I believe on most levels that God does not give people sexual orientations, but that's a subject for another column. For now, let's assume that being gay or lesbian does come 100 percent from God.

On the second day of Rosh Hashana, the Torah reading is from the book of Genesis, the story of the akeda, or the binding of Isaac. One of the most famous and challenging stories in the whole Bible, it goes something like this, at least if you have my subject in mind: God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. So what did Abraham do? He did not reply, "But I'm not the kind of father who is able to sacrifice his son. Maybe you should give that mitzva to one of the Molech worshipers down the street. Every bone in my body resists your commandment that I sacrifice Isaac. I'm not 'oriented' toward child sacrifice. In fact, I think it's a mitzva not to kill one's own child."

Nor: "I have no other heir. Preparing Isaac to be a forefather is my entire life's work. You're asking me to cancel everything I thought my life was about. No!" He didn't say that either.

Instead he replied, "Hineini," which means "Here I am," and he brought Isaac up the mountain, prepared to sacrifice him, and in the end God made it all okay.

Now, over the centuries there has been a tremendous amount of commentary, creativity, energy and debate over just what the akeda means - albeit probably never making this kind of reference to gays. There have, however, been some gay-related interpretations of this story, including a 1995 homoerotic photograph called "Akeda," which shows a shirtless man wearing tefillin and a Band-Aid, as a commentary on the AIDS crisis.

A 2003 Rosh Hashana sermon by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld (of the Jewish Catalogs) at the Conservative-Reconstructionist congregation Society for the Advancement for Judaism said: "The clearest place where the tradition's voice is overruled is when we have concluded that the tradition is out of step with contemporary moral values. The values of equality, inclusiveness and pluralism then lead to creating new traditions related to women and gay people."

BUT FOR me, the story reinforces my decision nearly eight years ago to stop having same-sex relations and to eventually pursue traditional Jewish family life married to a woman.

The idea that we should avoid following one of God's mitzvot because we're not oriented that way is inconsistent with my understanding of Torah beliefs. For example I know some men who feel they're oriented toward being attracted to non-Jewish women, yet the Torah has no exception for them. Many, many men will admit they are honestly oriented toward loving and being aroused by more than one woman at a time, yet polygamy was never encouraged by Judaism, and since the 11th century it has been forbidden to Ashkenazi Jews.

Conservative activist and perennial candidate Alan Keyes got in a lot of trouble for calling lesbian second daughter Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist." But the term is not so far off the mark. A person who believes in God and the Torah but overrules one of the commandments because it doesn't match his internal sexual makeup is basically saying, "It's all about me, me, me. My pleasure, my identity. Me." Judaism believes - and Abraham believed - that life is primarily about God and what God wants, not what we want.

Now, some Jews don't believe that the Torah comes from God. That's a much larger discussion. But what if my akeda drash can convince such people that if the Torah comes from God (assuming Leviticus 18:22 means gay sex is wrong - another larger discussion), then gay men should be celibate or marry women? If it can, this essay will have done its job.

After reading this article I forwarded it to LtD, who called me up and offered an explanation that he himself heard. Many Christians believe that it's impossible that people should be genetically gay; after all, if G-d had meant for people to be gay, then how could he have possibly forbidden it? This argument is a rather stupid one. G-d forbid people to steal. Does that mean that G-d didn't give people the desire to steal? Of course not! G-d forbade theft specifically because he implanted this tendency within people. Same goes for homosexuality. If no one wanted it, then why would G-d forbid it?
And yes, I know that it's a perversion, but so is the Milwaukee Brewers play the in the last two weeks, and we still see people paying good money to see them lose. It's a perversion to mate with animals, but people still do it.

This seems a perfect time to bring up the topic of child-abuse in the Jewish community. I live in Minnesota, and I'd love to be able to say that my community at least is safe from this. After all we're so small, so tight-knit, nothing could possibly happen here, right? Now, I've heard nothing, and I'm not suggesting anything, but I honestly have a hard time believing that nothing has ever gone on here. Yes, I hope nothing has, but at the same time, is it possible? Definitely.
In New York, we know for a fact that a lot of kids have been hurt, and a lot of adults have done some seriously evil things, and it really makes me sick when nothing is done about it. Dov Hikind tries to do something about the situation, and all he gets is a bunch of stupid Rabbis stonewalling him. If a guy walked up to me, and said that the reason he left Judaism is because he was abused, and no one did anything about it, then I would have nothing to say to him. I understand that bad things happen; but to refuse to acknowledge that, and continue on playing the same stupid games? Wasting your time on banning music is great, if there are no other problems in your community, but the fact is that our community has a lot of issues.
In the meantime, I suppose we'll survive, the same way we've survived for thousands of years, but I sure as heck would hope that someone does something soon. I suppose we could draw a paralell to Rabbeinu Gershom's era. I highly doubt that no one opposed what he did, and I'm sure that many people refused to obey. Eventually, people did listen, for whatever reason. And yet, there are still orthodox men out there who justify their actions by saying that what they're doing is okay, because after all, polygamy is only a Gezeirah, right? Hopefully, something will be done here, and a proper ban can be enacted to stop abusers and protect children. Yes, people will still do it, but at least they'll be punished and censured.