GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

This piece appeared in the Jerusalem Post and the San Francisco Sentinel December 10 of last year. I thought I would post it (and in coming days, other things I wrote after July 13 when the blog went on hiatus) in case people would like to see what I was doing when not blogging.

Some excerpts:

Just as many Jews tend to gravitate to liberal positions on a variety of issues, the segment of the Jewish community favoring same-sex marriage has grown larger and louder in the past few years.

That’s unfortunate, because if any issue has a “Jewish view,” it’s this one, and that view opposes redefining marriage.

Some reasons:

• First and foremost, same-sex marriage is against Jewish law. “So what?” many have argued, “we don’t try to ban pork or outlaw spending money on Shabbat.” But unlike those two transgressions, the prohibition of same-sex marriages – both religious and civil – is a Noahide law, as explained in the Talmud (Masechet Hullin). That means the ban on same-sex marriage, like the bans on adultery and murder, also apply to non-Jews. We therefore have a strong interest in rejecting such nuptials, regardless of the religion of the participants.

Even the increasingly liberal Conservative movement is on the record favoring man-woman marriage. Every paper on homosexuality ever passed by that movement’s Law Committee has either rejected same-sex marriage or taken no stance on it. Every paper embracing same-sex marriage has been voted down.

Rather than accusing people who support the traditional definition of marriage of imposing Jewish law on people of other faiths, it’s more useful to understand that support as an attempt to get the US government to reflect our values, which people on every side of every issue try to do all the time.

Also:

• Same-sex marriage hurts children. Gays can be wonderful parents, but children whenever possible should have both a mother and a father. Think of it this way: A lesbian can be a very good mother, but she cannot be a good father. Jewish tradition specifies different roles for mothers and fathers. For example, the Talmud states that a father should teach his child to swim. The Midrash says mothers should introduce their children to Torah. There are also intangible notions of what it means for a girl to become a woman, and how a man should treat a woman, for example, that one learns best from one’s mother and father.

However, under same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and California, legislatures and courts have required adoption agencies and fertility doctors to ignore whether a family provides both a mother and a father in providing services. In Massachusetts, in fact, if an adoption agency gives mother-father families even a slight tiebreaker preference, it faces being shut down by the government.

The more same-sex marriage succeeds, the quicker the idea will take hold throughout the government and society that favoring man-woman marriage is a kind of bigotry akin to racism. Teachers will be punished if they teach that marriage is a union of a man and a woman. Students who express distaste for same-sex marriage and state that they only want an opposite-sex spouse may even be reprimanded for being closed-minded.

I know that liberal Jews in particular are unlikely to be persuaded by some of the arguments above. But I hope everyone can agree that they are legitimate arguments, and that those of us who agree with Judaism’s prescription for man-woman marriage are not narrow-minded bigots trying to make gays into second-class citizens. Rather, we are individuals using our free-speech rights and our votes to help shape a society that is consistent with our values.