A Philadelphia rabbi is feeling threatened by the recent “propaganda blitz” with regard to the “homosexual lifestyle” and has begun a bid to enshrine religious bigotry among fundamentalist Jews. According to the Huffington Post, Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky and friends are circulating a “Torah Declaration, Petition, re: The Torah Stance on Homosexuality” that calls repentance and reparative therapy the only options for homosexuals. He wants rabbis and mental-health professionals to sign it. (Good luck with that last one, Rabbi, since all major mental-health organizations have rejected reparative therapy for homosexuality.)

In the declaration we see the same tired old misinformation and fuzzy thinking, including the confusion of sexual orientation with sexual behavior as well as with gender identity; crocodile-tear calls for compassion; and platitudes.

We emphatically reject the notion that a homosexually inclined person cannot overcome his or her inclination and desire. Behaviors are changeable.

It requires tremendous bravery and fortitude for a person to confront and deal with same-sex attraction. For example a sixteen-year-old who is struggling with this issue may be confused and afraid and not know whom to speak to or what steps to take. We must create an atmosphere where this teenager (or anyone) can speak freely to a parent, rabbi, or mentor and be treated with love and compassion. Authority figures can then guide same-sex strugglers towards a path of healing and overcoming their inclinations.

The key point to remember is that these individuals are primarily innocent victims of childhood emotional wounds.

The only viable course of action that is consistent with the Torah is therapy and teshuvah. The therapy consists of reinforcing the natural gender-identity of the individual by helping him or her understand and repair the emotional wounds that led to its disorientation and weakening, thus enabling the resumption and completion of the individual’s emotional development. Teshuvah is a Torah-mandated, self-motivated process of turning away from any transgression or sin and returning to G-d and one’s spiritual essence. This includes refining and reintegrating the personality and allowing it to grow in a healthy and wholesome manner.

In their fear-based refusal to think outside their rigid interpretation of the Bible, homophobic ultra-Orthodox Jews are in between a rock and a hard place. They want to believe God is good. They want to believe the Torah prohibits homosexuality. So they are literally forced to believe, in the face of all reason and decency, that homosexuality is a choice:

The concept that G-d created a human being who is unable to find happiness in a loving relationship unless he violates a biblical prohibition is neither plausible nor acceptable. G-d is loving and merciful. Struggles, and yes, difficult struggles, along with healing and personal growth are part and parcel of this world. Impossible, life long, Torah prohibited situations with no achievable solutions are not.

Assuming that’s true, Rabbi, I suggest re-examining the “prohibited situations” part of your impasse rather than denying the “impossible” part and calling debunked quackery  an “achievable solution.”

…The Torah does not forbid something which is impossible to avoid. Abandoning people to lifelong loneliness and despair by denying all hope of overcoming and healing their same-sex attraction is heartlessly cruel.

Heartlessly cruel, Rabbi? You’re projecting. Look in the mirror.

For those wishing to comment on this declaration, the email address it contains is TorahDec@gmail.com.

Yoni Bock and Ron Kaplan, two Orthodox Jewish men, recently married each other in a ceremony officiated by Stephen Greenberg, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi: it’s an historic first! And God did not strike them down. Instead, two men’s loving union was blessed both by the District of Columbia and by a God they and their courageous rabbi choose to believe smiles upon loving couples.

Sniff! Congratulations, Yoni and Ron, from Truth Wins Out. To those members of the Orthodox community who have given over their consciences entirely to one particular exclusivist interpretation of the Torah (their comments are in painful evidence at The Jewish Week’s mention of the wedding), and who state that Rabbi Greenberg is not an Orthodox rabbi despite having been ordained as one, some words from Martin Luther King, Jr., that seem apropos even though no one is calling for Greenberg’s imprisonment.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

In an effort to make sure that all Orthodox Jews fulfill the Biblical commandment to have children, gay Jewish organization Kamoha and Rabbi Arele Harel of Israel’s West Bank now run a matchmaking service to help gay and lesbian Jews marry–each other. The rabbi tells the folks he’s been setting up that they will learn to love each other once the children arrive. And how are the happy couples doing? None would talk to the media, apparently. But one guy trying the service told the AP he might talk to his future wife about continuing to date men. According to the rabbi, this is okay:

Harel said as long as both parties are aware the other is dating, it would not be adultery in such a union. He said the same would not be true for a straight couple because they are sexually compatible* and have no reason to look elsewhere. Jewish law forbids adultery.

Interestingly, the rabbi’s plan is being criticized by other rabbis because he isn’t encouraging gays and lesbians to change their sexual orientations. Kamoha’s website almost but doesn’t quite take a stand on that strategy:

In order to prevent a situation in which after several years of marriage, one of a couple’s spouses goes through a change in sexual orientation…(those) suitable for this project are those who are not in the process of trying out a new sexual orientation, but rather for those who have accepted themselves as being gay or lesbian….We assist couples, whose desire it is to establish a family, and who have already accepted the fact that they will never be able to alter their orientations. (emphasis in original text)

Not only is a same-sex wedding impossible in Israel, but so are civil weddings. The theocratic Israeli law in this regard requires that all weddings involving Jews be signed off on by Orthodox leaders, so many Israelis go to Cyprus or elsewhere to tie the knot. There are few options for gay couples wanting to raise children, though some, presumably non-Orthodox, choose surrogacy or adoption of a partner’s child.

The  kludgy Kamoha-Harel response to the inconvenient truth of Orthodox homosexuality reminds me of the eruv, a ceremonial fence usually consisting of a wire strung between telephone poles that allows observant Orthodox Jews to carry things on their person on Shabbat. By making a public space ritually private, the eruv attempts to reconcile the religious illegality of carrying things in public on Shabbat with the fact that people need to be able to push baby carriages and carry house keys if they want to step outside their homes on Friday nights and Saturdays. There are some social upsides to the eruv–for one thing, it can render a neighborhood cozy when one’s social group has moved to homes inside the boundary–but it can also lead to ridiculous situations, as when people won’t step past it to finish walking home a friend who doesn’t live within it, since completing the stroll would require them to leave their carried belongings. To people with this cast of mind, ditching someone at the boundary is the lesser of two evils, just as to Harel it’s apparently better to commit to a passionless marriage as long as you do as the Torah commands and create children. I wonder how he reconciles this with onah, the Jewish law that requires a husband to sexually satisfy his wife?

* Which would mean this rabbi assumes any straight man and any straight woman are sexually compatible solely by dint of their straightness–a view of human sexuality that’s inaccurate at best. According to the AP, Harel also believes some gays and lesbians can change their sexual orientations.

Here is a wonderful video, please check it out.

Burdened by two scandals, the ex-gay activist group Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality has changed its name.

The change occurred recently without fanfare on the organization’s web site. The new name: “Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing”

Despite the name change, JONAH’s mission remains largely the same:

• Deny the existence of sexual orientation, a predominant state of sexual attraction to a particular gender
• Promote the myth that homosexual attraction is caused not by biology or brain chemistry, but by a Freudian deficiency of “masculinity” in men that is caused by bad parenting or abuse
• Receive substantial aid from conservative Christian evangelical organizations which teach that faith in Jesus Christ offers the only path out of homosexuality

And its credentials and practices are as scandalous as ever.

Far from “healing” its clients of any sexual confusion or self-doubt, JONAH has a reputation for supplying its clients with Christian evangelical books and subjecting them to unethical abuses that would never be tolerated among true mental-health professionals. And its counselors’ abuses aren’t “new alternatives,” they are century-old snake-oil remedies.

• JONAH’s leader, Arthur Abba Goldberg, is a convicted Wall Street con artist who looted millions of dollars from poor communities. Goldberg has no professional credentials in the mental-health sciences
• JONAH’s senior trainer, Alan Downing, likewise has no professional credentials and stands accused by two former clients of sexual misconduct
• JONAH and its counselors refuse to keep accurate and comprehensive records about their clients, lest such records fall into the hands of objective scientists and be used to measure actual rates of success or failure

By now, the world knows that Arthur Abba Goldberg was a big-time crook. After he left prison and his parole was up, he founded Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality (JONAH). He also became a major player in the National Association for Research and Therapy for Homosexuality (NARTH) During his decade-long tenure he never revealed his sordid past.

He hid by slyly dropping the “Abba” from his soiled name. For 10 years, he has posed as a moral paragon and paraded himself around the nation as an “expert” on homosexuality. The truth is, he is just an ex-con up to his same old tricks. Except this time, his con game is “curing” LGBT people.

Today, I went into the bowels of a musty New Jersey library to retrieve old copies of The Record (Bergen) from 1989. I had to use microfiche, giving me flashbacks of my high school investigative reporting classes. Below is a crook photo of Goldberg from the July 18, 1989 issue of The Record under the headline, “SWINDLE: Bond Whiz Admits Guilt in $2B Fraud.”

The sub-headline is “Abracadabra is No Houdini.”

Sadly, Goldberg and his apologists are already spinning his criminality and moral turpitude. They are saying that his appalling past is being distorted by gay activists. And, they are claiming that his crimes are minor…..because we ALL know someone who tried to steal $2 billion dollars. More on that another time. For now just enjoy the newspaper clips.