Are jews allowed to be gay
Homosexuality in Jewish Law
Among the sexual perversions proscribed as criminal offenses in the moral code of the Torah are homosexual relations between males (Lev. 18:22). Both offending parties are threatened with capital punishment (Lev. 20:13), though minors under 13 years of age are exempt from this as from any other penalty (Sanh. 54a). Talmudic statute extends the prohibition, but not the penalty, which is limited to flagellation, also to lesbianism, i.e., homosexual intimacies between women, based on the general warning not to indulge in the abhorrent practices of the Egyptians and the Canaanites (Sifra 9:8). While the laws on both offenses are codified by Maimonides (Yad, Issurei Bi’ah, 1:14; and 21:8), the prohibition of homosexuality proper is omitted from R. Joseph Caro’sShulhan Arukh. This omission reflects the perceived absence of homosexuality among Jews rather than any difference of views on the criminality of these acts.
The Bible refers to actual incidents involving homosexuality only in describing the abominations of the sinful city of Sodom, where the entire population demanded of Lot the surrender of his visitors (Gen. 19:5), i.e., have carnal truth of th
My secret life as a gay ultra-Orthodox Jew
Once you are pregnant that infant becomes both a hostage and your hostage taker. You are held hostage by your minor. We are expected to have eight or nine children and I kept getting pregnant. My feelings built up inside me until one day I was walking down the street in a little cul-de-sac somewhere. There was so much noise in my brain that I started saying "I'm queer , I'm gay, I'm gay!" out loud.
It made me touch like I had to do something about it. Eventually, I told my husband. I ponder he already knew I was homosexual but he'd convinced himself that it was just a latent desire rather than an integral part of my identity.
We still don't know what we are going to do. We have children together and a family set-up that works. If my husband and I separate we would forfeit all of that. I think we would all misplace something if we broke apart so I may successfully stay married.
I hope my family can stay together, although I don't know what shape that would accept . People have all kinds of arrangements. Rabbis have unlike ideas than some about how you should keep people together. In a case like mine, instead of trying to
The sources of Judaism’s traditional position on homosexuality and gay issues are adequately known. Two verses in Leviticus (Leviticus 18:23 and Leviticus 20:13) express unequivocal condemnation of male queer sex (although it is not clear whether what is referred to is intercourse or all sexual acts between men). According to Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a female, both of them hold committed an abomination; they shall surely be set to death; their blood shall be upon them.”
READ: Putting The Prohibition Against Homosexuality in Context
As noticeable by its language, the biblical prohibition does not extend to female gay acts, though later commentators disapproved of lesbianism. One rabbinic source associates female homosexuality with the activities of the Egyptians and Canaanites, from which the Jews are supposed to abstain. Other authorities detail lesbianism as lewd or promiscuous, but do not consider it a capital offense. The Leviticus verses also imply that it is the act of homosexual sex, not the homosexual person, that is abhorred.
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The liberal Jewish movements have undergone dramatic shifts in their approach to gay, lesbian and transgender Jews in the past two decades, but among the Orthodox the changes have been far less dramatic — and in many quarters, virtually nonexistent.
Two seemingly remove biblical denunciations of homosexual sex, as well as the corpus of rabbinic commentaries and legal codes based on those verses, limit how far Orthodox Judaism, marked by its fidelity to traditional understandings of Jewish regulation, or halacha, can move on this subject.
Though several efforts own emerged in recent years to lend more support to Orthodox Jews experiencing homosexual desires and make the community more soft-hearted and welcoming toward them, all these efforts stop short of sanctioning gay relationships.
Theological and Legal Limitations
Across the spectrum of Orthodox practice, the consensus view is that gay sex and marriage are inconsistent with Jewish tradition. The objection is rooted in two verses in Leviticus that expressly prohibit a man from lying with another man “as one lies with a woman,” an act described as an “abomination” that is punishable by death. Though the prohibition is understood