From the Friday weekend edition of Haaretz newspaper:
Matches made in heaven: Rabbi pairs religious gays, lesbians to start families
"Rabbis from the religious Zionist community have launched an initiative to marry gay men to lesbian women...So far, 11 marriages have been performed... [and the ] 12th couple has just announced their engagement. [There is] a list of another 30 gays and 20 lesbians seeking matches.
[T]he current initiative is different in that it stems not from an effort to sweep the issue under the carpet, but from a growing acknowledgment of homosexuality...Most of the couples agree not to have relationships with members of their own sex, but if there are 'lapses' once every few years, they don't see this as a betryal. Generally it's between them and their Creator."
The article brings as an example the first "experimental" couple, Roni and Etti (psuedonyms of course), who say that they are "careful to keep up normal appearances before the children and the outside world, even sleeping in the same room, though they don't sleep together." Their two children were born through artificial insemination. (The wife of the late Palestinian leader, Yassir Arafat, also opted for artificial insemination. Not that I am making any comparison, G-d Forbid, between Arafat and these couples, but why marry a person with whom you can't stand the idea of sex?)
The reason I conceived Raphaela through IUI was to leave room for the right man to come along and join us at some point. I am actively looking for that man who will be my best friend and equal partner, my lover and the father to my current child, and who knows, maybe a brother or sister for Raphaela. I am single not because of my heterosexual identity, but because I have not yet found the right person.
While I applaud the religious Zionist movement for apparently acknowledging that the gay community exists, I don't think they are doing anyone any favors by dressing up these couples as traditional and normal. I believe that children know the truth of their home and their family; I agree with those who oppose this movement who say that being open and true to one's self "leads to more happiness than living a lie."
Oh, and good to know that 'cheating' on one's fictional spouse every few years is between "them and their Creator." That's a positive family value to pass onto the children of these sacred unions.
The article closes by noting that two of the arranged couples are filing for divorce, and the Rabbis in charge worry whether the children of these "experimental marriages will end up suffering."
My point exactly. At the end of the day, all thoughts of all parents - single, married or fictional - must consider the innocent children.
30 comments:
Marriage meansdifferent things to different people. Marriage also has different roles in different cultures. I don't think we should judge those couples harshly
Respect other people's choices just like you would like your single mother choice respected. Just b/c you would not get married to someone you are not attracted to, does not mean others should not. Perhaps, these couples are getting married b/c they want company and someone to share parenting duties and believe that the primary reason to marry is to raise Jewish children. Perhaps, they love each other in a platonic way. Many arranged marriages do not start off as love matches but grow into one.
Reading the article it seems like the gay/lesbians who are marrying are doing so because they want a home with children and a partner of some sort. Roni and Etti sound very happy "It's incredible," they wrote. "Six years ago, we didn't think we would ever be this happy. We thought everything was black, that we'd lost our chance of a normal life. But today, things are good for us. There are gaps, but that's true in every case. And we fill them with the great love we give to and receive from our children, and also enjoy the simple human love we give each other, such as any two people can give and receive...Roni and Etti feel they've benefited greatly, gaining "two wonderful children" and also "a good social life."
And what have they lost? "Nothing, because in any case we wouldn't have had spousal relationships, because it's [halakhically] forbidden. Yes, there are difficult moments of crisis. But they're nothing in comparison to the majority of the time, when it's good."
It also sounds like the majority don't stray but the comment "Generally, it's between them and their Creator." sounds similar to the way heterosexual people who cheat on their spouse think.
Lastly, any heterosexual couple in an arranged or nonarranged marriage with children can divorce. At least these couples are going into marriage knowing what the expectations are and perhaps most will succeed as a result.
Wow...what a bad idea. The minute the laws or norms change, and gay families get kosher, all these kids' families are going to break up.
The vigor of Orthodox belief that obvious realities can be denied in the name of halacha never fails to amaze me. It's essentially cruel, but you'll never get them to admit it. They see virtue in cruelty-for-a-purpose anyway, just like all our favorite historical bloody heroes.
The tenor of the comments here is quite revealing, by the way, and betrays a host of attitudes towards homosexuality that I think are bound for the dustheap, even in Israel. I can tell you they'd be viewed as offensive in polite company in American and would skew seriously how people viewed the speakers.
KGM, many people get married, or stay married, for family and companionship rather than romantic love. That doesn't mean they're content to hide the fact that they're gay, if that's the case. The way it's presented here is, I think, appalling -- a sort of shrugging, "Well, being with my girlfriend wasn't going to happen anyway, because it's halchically not allowed," as though the speaker's saying, "Well, we weren't going to go to the beach today anyway because it's raining."
My guess is that at this point homosexuality is open enough in dominant cultures, and the media of dominant cultures, that for these couples' kids it will be one of many norms, and that eventually they'll figure out that Ima's friend isn't her friend, but her lover, maybe her beshert. Or Abba's. And then they'll be standing there in the middle of a family built on a serious lie, where the daily mode is more lies.
Do you really believe that's a good thing? Forty years ago, maybe, the kids might not have figured it out, because people didn't speak about these things, they weren't in mainstream movies, they weren't part of popular culture. But they are now.
if it works for these couples-who are we to pass to judgment. Perhaps, these thoughts in the article are behind the times but many people feel shidduchim is also behind the times - I have over 200 cousins who all got set up via shidduchim with no divorces
"if it works for these couples-who are we to pass to judgment."
Except it doesn't work for these couples. It's merely the best they can figure to do given a society around them that refuses to acknowledge that they're gay, and let them make families with the people they love and have passion for. I call that cruel, and say that it'll work out badly for their children, once their children figure out what kind of lies underpin their families.
"Perhaps, these thoughts in the article are behind the times"
This really bothered me, and I had to go away and think why.
It isn't that they're behind the times. It's simply that they're cruel. Slavery and animal abuse aren't done things anymore, in nice places; do you figure this is a matter of fashion?
Not to be allowed to love whom you love, and make a life, because of categories; to be told your sexuality is not permitted -- how is this not cruel?
So as a substitute, you say, "Look, if you pretend to be straight, if you have this anodyne marriage, you don't have to be complete outcasts from adult life, you can do what grownups do, have a home with a family"; you give them some perversion of marriage, and say here, now you're happy. What's not sick about that?
I think what bothers me more than almost anything else here is the apparent inability to perceive the cruelty inherent in the situation.
so you saying that these people should never have a family of their own? These are people who are religious jews and who hold all laws of the Torah including not having sex with someone of the same gender. They do not want to be exposed as homosexuals in society. They do not want to be single parents either b/c 1) they know it is difficult, 2) too many questions may be asked (is the reason why you are not married is b/c you are gay?) 3) gays are not allowed to adopt (look at FL in the US)but want to fulfill the commandment of having children. Gay families will not become acceptable in the Orthodox community for many years past the age of the these people child bearing years. These kids are being exposed to love and kindness from their parents and people who love them unconditionally and wanted them. Who are we to deny them this and consider it cruel and inhuman.
" so you saying that these people should never have a family of their own?"
No, and I think that's a perverse way to interpret what I've said. I'm saying that there should be no problem with gays marrying and having families with the people they actually want to marry. Their girlfriends, boyfriends. Yes, halacha me in one ear and out the other. If we can invent eruvs and shabbos goyim, we can invent kosher gay marriage.
And I'm sorry, I don't understand this comment: "gays are not allowed to adopt (look at FL in the US)but want to fulfill the commandment of having children". What does the FL part mean?
I live in a state where gay marriage is legal; long before it was legalized, my daughter went to daycare with the biological and adoptive children of several gay families. Years later, we're mostly still in touch, we still know the kids. I am failing to see the problem with children growing up in gay families.
You're saying that it's going to be, what, decades before gay families are acceptable in the Israeli Orthodox community? Well, whose fault is that? You seem to view it as an inevitability, something outside human control.
It's funny, I had no idea I felt so strongly on this issue until I heard people treat pushing others to live a married lie, and raise children inside it, as a wonderful thing. And so blithely, too.
AC: You may think it is a terrible injustice that gays cannot marry who they want and have sex with who they want. You may think it is unfair and we should do everything to fight for their rights as gay individuals. You may think it is cruel and inhuman that gays/lesbians are marrying each other and raising kids together. The people profiled in the article are adults;it is their choice. They are not being brainwashed or forced into anything against their will. They are not being told being gay is bad and people are trying to convert them to heterosexuality.
"The people profiled in the article are adults;it is their choice. They are not being brainwashed or forced into anything against their will. They are not being told being gay is bad and people are trying to convert them to heterosexuality. "
All right, think about what you're saying.
What is their choice? They have a choice between being secretly, but honestly, gay, and familyless; and living some parody of a straight marriage, having children, and lying in a most fundamental way to those children and the people around them about who they are.
Those are the choices, unless they want to uproot themselves from a religion and society that's meaningful to them. That's the price they currently have to pay to go live openly as gay parents.
Do you think these are reasonable choices? I don't. You may as well say, "Look, you can eat any of these three maggoty plates of food if you're hungry. Your choice. If you're hungry enough, you'll choose one. And then you should be happy! Because it was your choice."
What stands between these people and being able to live honestly and openly with their children and the people they truly want to marry is the Orthodox who're handing down judgments on gay marriage. That's all. Who can change their minds about that? Only themselves. So this is their choice, then: Keep on serving up maggoty plates of food and calling them choices, or change.
Halacha is not immutable. We develop workarounds out the wazoo when the law conflicts with reasonable daily life. The only thing at issue here is that we have a bunch of bigots who have decided that people who are gay aren't entitled to reasonable daily lives.
Think very carefully about why you're arguing that these sham marriages are some sort of happy thing.
ac: I think this is something we are never going to agree about in letting Orthodox gay/lesbians choose a path that they feel is right for them. I just feel that we should respect the choices others have made for themselves even if we feel that society is in error. Everyone has the right to make choices that they want. I do not think that sex b/w gay men will ever be acceptable in Orthodox Judaism since it is explicitely forbidden in the Torah in the same way that Orthodox Jews will never allow eating pork, and violating shabbat. You might say that well, drs violate shabbat-but that is for the purpose of saving a life which is allowed. btw, I am not against gays marrying gays and being allowed to live a full and open life. But, the reality is that in the Orthodox Jewish world at this time, that is not happening.
"I just feel that we should respect the choices others have made for themselves even if we feel that society is in error."
Yes, I agree with you. But the choice the people in the article say they'd really prefer, and they make this explicit, is being able to marry their real loves and live in peace while remaining part of the community. I certainly thing we should respect that choice.
It's sad, because apparently they value the community's wellbeing more than the community values theirs and their children's.
You've reverted to this "the Orthodox community is never going to accept gay marriage" line, as though this is some immutable force of nature, rather than the intentional decision of human individuals. It is the intentional decision of human individuals. Which is why outrage is properly directed at them when they support offering such a false, lousy, and altogether maggoty set of choices to gay Orthodox Jews and their children.
Actually, this is interesting, and I hadn't really thought about it before. What took me aback on this comment thread was the immediate shift to presenting the situation as the free choice of the individuals in question, and a celebration of free choice, despite the obvious social coercion against what these people clearly want most to choose. I thought that was really very freaky. Then I realized no, I've seen this sort of argumentation before.
It's very interesting. There's a trope in Orthodox thought -- and I imagine it exists in some form wherever dogma rules -- that short-circuits critical thought. It's just particularly ironic in Jewish thought, because we make such a very big deal about the quality of our thought, the vigor of intellectual debate and argumentation, etc. But it explains why, when having a debate that bumps up against entrenched custom or law, your conversational partner will suddenly sound sun-dazed. You can stand there saying, "What? How does that follow? That makes no sense at all." But it does no good, because you're now talking to social dogma, not your friend or aunt or whoever. It doesn't matter how bright the person is, or how carefully you lead them to the San Andreas Fault of their argument; the case is closed, and often they'll claim they truly cannot see your point -- or will concede it on an intellectual level, then deny that it has any real meaning or importance. Again, sun-dazed.
I see it most often when the talk has to do with Jews who've committed serious crimes, but it comes up other places, too. Like here. The social propaganda completely trumps obvious moral points, like "It's wrong to be cruel to people" and "Shocking criminal activity should not be rationalized away just because the perp is on the home team."
The fear of isolation, of being ostracized, must be tremendous. It's like some incredibly powerful reason-and-morality-bending ray.
While I'm at it, here, let me supply the honest Orthodox response to my argument:
"The law is more important than the individual; that is the foundation of this religion and indeed all Western legal codes. In some cases application of the law is cruel. Here, it is cruel.
The American legislative and judicial systems allow for revisions of laws when it becomes apparent that the law is cruel or discriminatory under the Constitution and subsequent codes. There is provision for mercy. In this case, because the law is explicitly part of the Torah and does not stem from later interpretations, we deny that there is any way to revise or mitigate this cruel law. There is no way to revise or mitigate laws given explicitly in the Torah. We are willing to be cruel in order to uphold the law." Then you go have lunch.
Anything short of that means that there are ways to revise and mitigate the law, interpret it so that the Orthodox community does not treat gays and lesbians cruelly. And in that case any talk about delay and decades and "at this time" is simply bull. People are capable of changing their view on social issues with real alacrity. I see no reason to wait.
ac: I did not say Orthodox Jews won't accept gay marriage in my last post-I did say "I do not think that sex b/w gay men will ever be acceptable in Orthodox Judaism" since it says "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.(Leviticus 18:22)
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.(Leviticus 20:13).
Also I was thinking about the thought that kids knowing their parent's marriages being a sham because they are not having sex with each other. In true orthodox marriages, people do not know when married couples are having sex-whether the reason is b/c they do not feel like it or because the wife is in niddah. Orthodox couples generally keep their beds either always pushed together or always separate so when people walk in they are unaware of the couple's sexual relationship. Generally, public displays of affection are either not done or done discreetly so people do not know when they are separate. Most Orthodox parents do not talk about their sex life with their kids. So I am unsure that these kids will ever be aware of the true sexual nature of their parents' marriage. In terms of these parents being able to talk about sex with their kids, openly gay parents who are in open relationships are able to talk to their sons/daughters about sex with the opposite sex even though they have no experience with that aspect of sex.
KGM, you're making complications out of a very simple matter.
Here's the situation:
Woman A and Woman B both love and desire each other. Like many couples, they want to marry and have a family. They cannot, thanks to either the bigotry and/or the cruelty of the Orthodox community. So instead they *marry other people*, with whom they will never have sex, to whom they are not attracted, and with whom they are not in love, and have families with them. And secretly they will continue to yearn after each other and the family they were never able to have. They will pretend to their children that they're straight and have married the people they wanted to marry. The same will happen with the men involved.
That's the lie. Is this really so hard to understand? Or is that you think this is somehow no big deal, people deliberately locking themselves into sexless, loveless "marriages", convincing their children that the marriage is real, while continuing to love someone on the outside, all because the group they belong to and care about is bigoted and/or cruel?
I don't understand your point about the gay parent's ability to talk about straight sex. Of course gay people can talk about straight sex. Straight people can talk about gay sex. We even have biologists who can talk about insect sex. I'm not seeing what you're driving at, here.
ac: If people get married while they are in love with some one else (whether they are gay or straight) it is a bad idea. I am sure there are many straight people who marry one person while in love with another and think about them while having sex with their married partner. However, I am reading Roni and Etti's comments and it does not sound like they were in love with other people and have settled into a marriage but still think about others. My comments about talking about sex it was to head off a potential argument that kids will see through the marriage when they are older b/c their parents cannot talk about sex with them b/c they have no experience of having sex with a person of the other sex. Let's just leave it as we disagree with each other.
Roni says she's willing to do this because marrying a true love is explicitly forbidden. There's no reason for her to seek the woman she should marry, or to try to marry her, if she's found her.
I am reminded, throughout this conversation, of my grandparents' insistence that chaining the legs of the trotters at the racetracks isn't cruel, and that in fact the horses are very well treated, and being forced to run dragging a cart with an unnatural gait is a very small price to pay for how well they live, and besides they don't mind it anyway.
I'm indebted for the reminder of how people can make themselves wilfully blind to what's in front of them. And you want to know why the neighbors stood by and watched in 1938, and weren't too helpful in 1942? All right.
ac: do not compare gays/lesbians who wish to marry each other and cannot with the 6 million jews including children who were killed b/c they were jewish. it is NOT the same.
I didn't say they were the same, KGM. Don't jump.
I said that the willful and self-interested blindness to the cruelty in front of one's eyes is the same. On one hand, Orthodox gazing, with willfully blind eyes, at the deformation of gay people's lives; on the other, Christian neighbors watching Jews taken away (why should they worry about where to?) and being strangely blind to their Jewish friends' troubles when the surviving Jews returned, very thin.
You'd have thought that some humanity would've sprung up then, no? No, is the answer. And I'd have thought that some humanity would spring up when looking at what the Orthodox community puts gays through -- but no.
AC: I would like to end this discussion with you especially since you have decided to use the Holocaust (where many of my relatives including my elderly great grandparents and small cousins were murdered by the Nazis because they were Jewish) to bolster your arguments.
Your comments
"the willful and self-interested blindness to the cruelty in front of one's eyes is the same. On one hand, Orthodox gazing, with willfully blind eyes, at the deformation of gay people's lives; on the other, Christian neighbors watching Jews taken away (why should they worry about where to?)"
Are you saying the cruelty that some Orthodox Jews are showing gays/lesbians by not letting them live an open life as they wish in the Orthodox Jewish community is the same as the cruelty that Christians showed when they watched Jews get taken to concentration camps by force (and were shot if they did fought back) for the sole purpose of extermination? These deportations against Jews occurred after laws were passed to remove Jews from political, economic and cultural life. Jews were subject to various restrictive laws like:
1) Jews (even 1/4 Jews) were no longer citizens of their country
2) they were no longer allowed to vote
3) In Germany were denaturalized
4) banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from having any influence in education, politics, higher education, and industry,
5) forced to sell their businesses and homes to non jews for a minuscule amt of what they were worth
6) Jewish books were burned
7) physical violence against Jews on the streets was commonplace
The modern Orthodox Jewish world at least in the US is changing. There was an event hosted by theYeshiva University Tolerance Club and Wurzweiler School of Social Work entitled "Being Gay in the Orthodox World: A Conversation with Members of the YU Community. It was held on Tuesday at Yeshiva University, a prominent Orthodox Jewish college in New York City. The event drew about 1,000 attendees. Many people attending were outwardly supportive, if not tolerant, of the gay Orthodox Jews who spoke.
On July 22, 2010, a "Statement of Principles on the Place of Jews with a Homosexual Orientation in Our Community" was released and endorsed by 104 Orthodox rabbis and lay leaders, Some of the ways in which the statement diverges from common Orthodox positions are:
Jews struggling to live their lives in accordance with halakhic values need and deserve our support. Accordingly, we believe that the decision as to whether to be open about one's sexual orientation should be left to such individuals, who should consider their own needs and those of the community. We are opposed on ethical and moral grounds to both the "outing" of individuals who want to remain private and to coercing those who desire to be open about their orientation to keep it hidden.
Communities should display sensitivity, acceptance and full embrace of the adopted or biological children of homosexually active Jews in the synagogue and school setting.
Jews who have an exclusively homosexual orientation should, under most circumstances, not be encouraged to marry someone of the other gender.
They also say
All human beings are created in the image of God and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect (kevod haberiyot). Every Jew is obligated to fulfill the entire range of mitzvot between person and person in relation to persons who are homosexual or have feelings of same sex attraction. Embarrassing, harassing or demeaning someone with a homosexual orientation or same-sex attraction is a violation of Torah prohibitions that embody the deepest values of Judaism.
The very religious Jewish community (haredim) is not likely to change. These are people who among other things throw rocks at cars that drive through their neighborhoods on the Sabbath, protest parking lots being open on the Sabbath, and have signs up in their neighborhoods against women being immodestly dressed. (whether/or not you disagree with them, I think judaism is around today due to their keeping Torah Law and not changing. Look at reform judaism. They do not keep many of the Torah laws b/c they feel they do not apply today. How many 5th generation reform jews are there?
I do consider myself a liberal and do hope for the day when all Jews can marry who they want and live publicly how they wish. I hope for the day when Jews will be accepted as Jews and not based on their orientation.
KGM, you write:
"Are you saying the cruelty that some Orthodox Jews are showing gays/lesbians by not letting them live an open life as they wish in the Orthodox Jewish community is the same as the cruelty that Christians showed when they watched Jews get taken to concentration camps by force (and were shot if they did fought back) for the sole purpose of extermination?"
Well, let's narrow the ground a bit first, here. First of all, the Christians didn't know what would happen to the Jews. The Jews didn't know what would happen to the Jews. So let's knock that off your list.
Second, yes, you're right, the Christians who protested might've been shot. The same Christians, though, watched the surviving Jews come back, were not facing guns, and still didn't help their old neighbors and friends. This is not cruelty and willful blindness?
We can, if you like, back it up and compare the cruelty and willful blindness of those Christians in Europe and abroad who shrugged off the treatment of the Jews during the descent to the Holocaust. The firing of Jewish faculty, for instance. Anything that deforms a life, as does, oh, refusing to allow marriage.
Yes, I'd say that's exactly the comparison I'm making. I had family who died in the Holocaust too. And? So? Willfully blind cruelty is willfully blind cruelty, no matter which team it's coming from.
In the next post, you attempt to say, "Look! It's getting better! Some Orthodox are saying they don't outright despise gays!" Hey, whoop-de-do. I already outlined the available position, and you're not saying anything here that knocks that down. Either you admit it's cruel but unchangeable, or you admit it's changeable and the only people standing in the way of decent behavior towards gays are the Orthodox themselves. If it's the latter, I'm not seeing, in your posts, any tenable excuse for the glacial pace, or for the "oh, isn't it nice that they can do that" at perversions like gays resorting to fake marriages in order to have families.
AC: I did say I was not going to debate you anymore since we disagree on this topic. However, you misunderstood something I wrote. I did not say that christians who protested would be shot-I was talking about the jews who did not want to go were forced to leave by nazis/collaborators with guns and they were the ones who were shot. By 1942, many people knew what was going on with Jews. The reason why I would assume some christians did not help jews who came back was b/c they either owned stuff that previously belonged to jews and did not want to return it, or were antisemitic and hated Jews to begin with. One last thing and I am done. I do not know how quickly you expect things to change;often things change slowly. At least there are Orthodox Jewish leaders who are trying to change the discussion and perhaps they will soon. Meanwhile, in the US, in many states as well as the Christian right refuse to recognize gay marriages;many Congressmen are trying to get the Defense of Marriage Act passed so why do you expect it to be different in Israel or among Orthodox jews when in the US, things are still discrimatory against gays/lesbians in regards to marriage?
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