It’s lovely that you believe those opinions were invented by their authors. Especially with the older sources, I believe they are part of the Oral Law delivered at Sinai and thus they come from G-d. I have no interest in convincing you that the Oral Law comes from G-d. I really don’t care. But the fact is I believe it is Divine and treat it as divine and thus your criticism that Orthodox Jews decide what they believe and then look for a text to justify it is complete baloney to anyone who understands how Judaism works.

I agree with you that “religions are normally made up.” Virtually every religion in history is made up. Mine comes from G-d. And the only one I care about is mine.

Well I said “religious people” but I did mean to include Orthodox Jews to at least some extent. They undoubtedly do less of the above than typical Christians, but they still do some of it as you inadvertently confirm by citing four different authorities who have expanded the thin gruel of the Torah into elaborate moral systems in broadly similar but different ways according the aesthetic and moral prejudices of the particular authors.

Where I was remiss is not emphasizing the _other_ major mechanism whereby religious people get values, which is believing personal opinion or conventional wisdom that earlier generations have put into the mouth of God. I know that it’s a cherished Jewish tradition that Moses got both the written and oral Torah straight from God, but the historical record isn’t remotely good enough to establish anything of the kind against the background fact that religions are normally made up. The oldest manuscripts are a few hundred BC for documents that record events that supposedly occurred as far back as 1700 BC and before.

I had decided to not come back here. I was just going to let you have the last word. What happened. I have been corresponding with David, and he told me that he’d responded. So, I gave in to my weakness and returned.

The reason that I was not going to come back, and the reason why this will likely be my last post on this blog is because I have found so much to be disgusted by. I would list it for you, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters to you, but you.

You are intelligent, but you are intellectually corrupt. I don’t need you to defend gays as being able to change. I’ve never been to NARTH. I don’t believe the stupidity that I wrote. It was an example of how impossibly corrupt you are intellectually. I am an orthodox Jew. I don’t get my theology from Christians. It predates them by over one thousand years. You know next to nothing about me, my theology, or basic tenets of logic, yet you are critical.

By “balancing principles of fairness with practical considerations,” you have finally admitted that you have a system that starts with you and your brain. This puts you into the same system as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. You only disagree on exactly how to define fairness and practical. Oh no! How can I say such a thing? They were murderous thugs. Yeah, but they figured out a system that worked for them, surrounded themselves with a whole bunch of non-critical thinkers and cowards who wouldn’t dream of disagreeing with the mob and went with the flow of their humanism.

I’ll end with something I said before. Judgment is for G-d. I don’t know if you are good or evil (or somewhere in between), for I can never know what your challenges, strengths, knowledge base, etc. are. I don’t end this thinking you are wicked. I end this thinking that you are severely impaired in your ability to reach conclusions based on reason and true research.

At the end of the day, it may be better to be wicked than to be skewed in one’s thinking. With clear and honest thinking, one can change from wicked to good. With skewed logic, one will always be stuck as a fool.

When it comes to practical halacha (Jewish law), scripture is among the least important sources for guiding us. If I had to determine what marriage should be, and I went to the Torah, I wouldn’t find much, except maybe that part in Bereishit/Genesis about “a man shall cling to his wife and they shall be as one flesh” (my paraphrase). But to get specific, detailed guidance about what is or is not a marriage, I would be smart to start with the Talmud Masechet Kiddishin, which is page after dense page of discussions about marriage, including which ones are and are not legitimate. Another smart place to would be Maimonides/Rambam’s 12th century Mishneh Torah, specifically under “Hilchot Ishut” which is all about marriage. And of course it would be stupid to forget the 16th century Shulchan Aruch, specifically Even Ha-Ezer, which has lots of data about marriage. There are of course many volumes written by Acharonim (later sages) since the Shulchan Aruch, including responsa (legal opinions) written during the present and previous generation. It would be irresponsible not to look at them.

Finally, Shmuel is qualified to look at all the legal literature described above, as he is a rabbi, but I am not. On particularly tricky questions, Shmuel would no doubt ask his own rabbi, and on all but the simplest questions (is rabbit kosher?) I would ask my rabbi, which I do at least twice a month.

So the notion that we make up our minds, and then look for a scriptural support is woefully ignorant of how Judaism works. There are rabbis, such as Shmuley Boteach, who are phenomenally pro-gay. If there was a way he could jimmy the system to make same-sex civil marriage legitimate, he would. But he can’t, because the system is not that flexible (it’s only a little flexible) and we believe that’s because Hashem (G-d) wants it that way. People like Shmuel and me are certain that Hashem thinks marriage by definition is between a man and a woman. We don’t start with our opinion and find a way to impute it to Hashem. Rather, we start with Hashem’s opinion and find a way to impute it to our lives.

Whether this is a good analogy depends on whether you read anything actually _by_ gay people or just hatchet jobs against them by their enemies. For example I know that NARTH is a fraud not primarily by reading attacks on them but by actually going to their website and reading it carefully. They make people “ex-gay” primarily by moving the goal posts past them using a number of different strategies. Sometimes they use a non-standard definition of “gay” which is a confused mix of identity (“I call myself gay”) and behaviour (“I primarily have same-sex sex”) rather than orientation (“I am primarily same-sex attracted”). And when they do seem to be talking about orientation, if you read carefully you’ll see that they’ve been teaching gay people to misidentify sexual attraction as something else and something else (not necessarily the same something) as sexual attraction. (If this sounds implausible, it’s just reversing my own trajectory, where for a while I mistook sexual attraction for envy because it came from such an unexpected direction that I didn’t recognize it.)

‘You have a curious inability to be honest or courageous. You believe that it is not moral to engage in same-sex sex? Where do you get your morals from?’

Same place as religious people do: balancing principles of fairness with practical considerations and then trawling through scripture to find verses that can be used as support. Except I tend to skip the trawling through scripture step.

Let me see if I can try the reversal of this.

I know that homosexuals are all people weak of spirit. They could all change if they only had a strong enough desire and good enough counseling. The world would be so much better if they’d just stop this gay stuff. You know how I know this? I read some books about them and of course some articles on the internet. I’m serious about my claims despite the fact that I’ve never spoken to a gay person. Why would I need to do that? I’ve got books and the internet.

You have a curious inability to be honest or courageous. You believe that it is not moral to engage in same-sex sex? Where do you get your morals from? Do you understand that it is subjective? It’s not a judgment call. It’s a statement of logic.

And lack of courage? You claim to have such a broad view of life. I can hear your condescending yawn. Mark has been there and when he was there, he done that. As it’s said when the realization hits that you’re involved in a one-way conversation, when only one person is interested in listening and lovingly sharing ideas, “Whatever.”

Well, duh, in a certain important sense, yes. Religion _is_ normally wrong about theology. No one can sensibly deny this, they can only be in denial about it. As Stephen Roberts said, and Richard Dawkins famously echoed, “I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” The question is, how do we create a livable society when the majority of people _are_ in denial of this? The answer is, with a whole lot of lip-biting and feigned respect. I’m up for that, but you broke the detente by publicly denouncing my relationship as immoral.

‘You paint yourself as well researched and clear on religion and religious claims, yet you haven’t had as much as a conversation with an orthodox Jew.’

Err, I did say “not so much”. And I have read up on Judaism, the authorship of the OT etc, etc, etc.

‘Ultimately, it’s your blind faith that you are what you are, and that it’s right/moral/whatever to be what you are.’

Err, no, that’s not my position. I’ve been very lucky in not having particularly sociopathic tendencies, and also in having enough useful skills to not have been subjected to much want or temptation. But I could have been, and then I would have had to struggle mightily to do the right thing. It’s just irrelevant because I deny that being gay, or being in a same-sex relationship, is sociopathic or otherwise immoral.

I’ve written a lengthy response, but me thinketh it too long for this forum. If you’d like, I’d gladly email it to David (aka Mr. Benkof) and have him send it to you. This is the short version without quoting you on every point. With more space, I can afford to be more gentle. Here, I frankly am more in your face. No offense intended. You seem tough.

You display a glaring hypocrisy. Slander of gays is bad. Slander of religious people is common sense. After all, they are so intellectually crippled that they frankly deserve it. Huh? Your response is littered with slanderous comments and implications against those with “superstitious nonsense.”

You paint yourself as well researched and clear on religion and religious claims, yet you haven’t had as much as a conversation with an orthodox Jew. It would be very easy for you to dismiss this suggestion as another attempt at conversing with a sheep with blind faith, but that would be stereotyping and over generalization. I would think that stereotyping and generalization would be especially repulsive to a homosexual. Why is it fair for you to assume that I’m a brainless zombie afraid of a lonely universe, yet if I assume that you are a promiscuous pedophile, I’d be quickly (and rightly) labeled as a bigoted scumbag? Let me make it clear that I don’t assume this of you or anyone; it just seems to be the double standard that you’ve created.

Last point. You said that you don’t view your sexuality from a theological starting point. Instead, it is a product of “I am what I am. Enough said.” That would be a subjective point of view through which to see the universe and self. That’s the kernel from which you piece together your gestalt. Your entitled to it, but it’s made by man with all of his flaws and limitations. Ultimately, it’s your blind faith that you are what you are, and that it’s right/moral/whatever to be what you are.

I don’t do blind faith. My intellect has brought me to an objective and timeless morality. I live with constant battles to conform to objective reality, and not to give into the reality that I’d like to create for my own pleasures and desires.

Ironic. I get to my starting point through logic and reason. By your own admission, your starting point is you. Then, you criticize me for being a person with corrupt intellect.

By the way, I’m aware of the lists of seemingly strange laws/verses/practices of orthodox Jews (I’ve seen some of them on this very blog). Before you glibly throw them at me, if you are the intellectually advanced one that you claim to be, let’s take this to a more appropriate forum and you can respectfully ask me if I believe in these things. Please don’t throw more hate and ugly stereotypes my way. It doesn’t do you justice.

Sure, but as I was saying to David recently, there are several different sorts of respect in play. G.B. Shaw said it best: “We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.” I respect people’s religion as something that gives them comfort in a harsh world. I don’t respect it as probably true, at least in respect of the theology or any morality tightly tied to the theology. If people want to comfort themselves in the privacy of their heads or their houses or their places of worship by fulminating against me as immoral, it’s good harmless fun and I’ll pay level-1 respect by biting my tongue. But although they also have the civil right of free speech to repeat these things in the public square, as soon as they do the detente is off and I reserve the right to criticize them harshly. (I also reserve the right to take a more honeyed approach.) I don’t see why I should stand by and let _anybody_ be slandered in the public square unless the accusation earns level-2 respect by being probably true.

‘It might surprise you to know that I have a belief system can actually tolerate the following: I believe that homosexual sex is immoral, but I don’t believe that I am better than you if you engage in that behavior and I don’t. In my spiritual system, I have no room to go there.’

I appreciate the humility implicit in this, and even though I don’t have much time for the theological underpinnings, I think there’s some good secular wisdom there as well. But I’m not mollified. The “we’re all sinners” play doesn’t magically make “your relationship is immoral” not slander. _Both_ aspects are important: maintaining adequate humility _and_ getting your concept of morality right.

‘It’s pretty difficult for you to think that my belief is unreasoning when you have never met me and have never heard me explain my belief.’

Not _so_ difficult. First, I’ve been sparring with a variety of religious people on the Internet for well over a decade, as well as reading up on the history and theology of various religions, and I’m pretty sure I would have heard all possible arguments. Second, it’s an inescapable fact that religion, considered generally as a preoccupation of people in every place and era, is _normally_ wrong about theology, and this sets a pretty high a-priori bar to clear. If as is very likely, at any point you’ve assumed that of course _your_ spiritual ancestors wouldn’t have put words into the mouth of a god/God character, you’ve got nothing, just empty pride. That’s what people _do_, not every day, but often enough to saturate the world with religions. Similarly, if at any point you’ve assumed that _your_ spiritual ancestors wouldn’t have _believed_ people who put words into the mouth of a god/God character, again you’ve got nothing.

‘I am under the impression that your belief is predicated upon something akin to, “This is my nature; G-d made me this way. Attempting to change is impossible and undesirable. I will change my sexual orientation as quickly as you’ll cut off a limb.”’

Err, way off, actually. First, I don’t view it in theological terms. I am what I am, enough said. Second, whether being gay is impossible to change or not is a distraction. The fact that being gay does appear to be immutable and that being in a gay relationship is important to my happiness just raises the stakes. The main issue is that your complaint is superstitious nonsense. I’d react nearly as strongly if you denounced me as immoral for stamp collecting, a hobby in which I have only the most desultory interest and could throw over for something else without the least unhappiness.

‘My main point is that mutual respect is possible’

Mutual level-1 respect is certainly possible in principle and I’m all for it. But as far as I’m concerned, it includes your side choosing not to use your civil right to call sexually active gay people immoral in the public square and renouncing any right to take vigilante action (anything from shunning and withholding of service through to stoning). Deal?

I hear you loud and clear. I’m also not convinced (can you guess which “radical fundamentalist” I am?), but they have an internal consistency of intellectual honesty. Yes, it requires an acceptance of “leap of faith” hypotheses which do not require the same scrutiny as everything which follows. But still, I guess I’m asking/challenging you to allow yourself the ability to respect people who believe that you have an aspect of your life that is wrong. In my world (and yours), there are many otherwise decent people (who I would also trust with my wallet) who just happen to believe that I’m doomed to burn forever because my idea of personal savior is, shall we say, radically different than theirs.

Okay. So what, so you believe I’m going to hell? Please pass the ketchup. I don’t care what you think of me. I’ve worked out my beliefs. I’m cool with that.

I can imagine that a fair response from you would be, “Yeah, but what would you say/feel if those who disagree with you were attempting to legislate something that is a frontal attack to your belief system?” My answer would be 1) it’s still not personal, it’s idealogical and 2) I would hope that I’d still avoid the name calling and the disrespect in a forum of hashing out ideas. It just seems that you express your hatred while decrying theirs.

As for your take on the semantics of homophobic, I have two feelings. One is that I’m glad that you can understand that there are many who operate without fear. However, the second is that I think that definition sucks (sometimes my English impresses me ( ; ). By using homophobic to group together all who think that homosexual sex is wrong is to hurt your own cause. I am a person who would fight for your rights and believes that you should be free from harassment. What you do and don’t do with your sexual organs is about as interesting to me as what I do with mine is to you. In my “religious voice,” that’s between you and G-d. In my “civic voice,” that’s your business.

When you use homophobe/homophobic to lump us together – to put me with the scum bags who truly hate and fear you – you hurt your cause. It might surprise you to know that I have a belief system can actually tolerate the following: I believe that homosexual sex is immoral, but I don’t believe that I am better than you if you engage in that behavior and I don’t. In my spiritual system, I have no room to go there. If you want my bets, I’ll put myself above a handful of people who bring practically nothing but evil into the world (Hitler, Stalin, and Mao are three of my favorites), but I don’t go into G-d’s world. I have enough on my plate to worry about how stuff operates in the heavens.

As I wrote that I have gay friends and business relations, I realized that it had the sound of “Some of my best friends are Jewish.” My intention was only to highlight that I don’t live with the perceived fear of homosexuals – that you say isn’t part of the homophobic gestalt.

Mark: I _do_ think your belief is unreasoning, but I don’t take that to be part of the definition of homophobia.

It’s pretty difficult for you to think that my belief is unreasoning when you have never met me and have never heard me explain my belief. Forgive my slight belligerence, but who here is unreasoning? I don’t quite think that this is the forum for this, but we’d have to pit the following assumptions against each other (I think). My assumption, based on reasoning believe it or not, is that G-d has revealed that homosexual sex (not feelings) is immoral. If I have a reasonable and logical approach that gets me to that point, then my belief is reasonable. I am under the impression that your belief is predicated upon something akin to, “This is my nature; G-d made me this way. Attempting to change is impossible and undesirable. I will change my sexual orientation as quickly as you’ll cut off a limb.”

My main point is that mutual respect is possible.

Mark: Don’t get me wrong – I’m sure they’re decent about many things. I’d trust them with my wallet to about the same extent as anybody else. But the majority of people opposing SSM are cheerfully open about the fact that it’s homophobia (mostly religious but not entirely so), and I think the majority of the remainder are biting their lips about homophobia so as not to put off moderates, and the majority of the few left over are kidding themselves that they’re not motivated by homophobia.

Again, with your definition of homophobic, there is little to argue with. According to you, I am homophobic and so is David. Imagine being gay and homophobic. I don’t envy him. I think you would benefit yourself, me, and the entire conversation by using a more narrow definition of homophobic. I don’t pretend that the homophobes aren’t out there. Remember, I get to hear what they say when they believe that there are not gays around (I’m sure you do sometimes as well, but I’m married so they “know” I’m not gay). I don’t spend personal time with hateful people, but I still get to hear it more than you. But, I think that if you’d learn to allow yourself to hear the voice that “moderates” carry and not be so quick to condemn people like me as a homophobe, you’d be able to take the conversation to a higher and more productive place. Maybe I’m kidding myself, but to conclude with breathtakingly sublime logic – maybe not.