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Jews! Gays! Jews and Gays!
Very nice piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal: an orthodox rabbi’s perspective on homosexuality. Unfortunately it’s behind the subscriber wall but if you can get your hands on a copy, take a look. I don’t agree that homosexuality offends God (if it did, he wouldn’t let them write all the good show tunes) but I love the rabbi’s classically Jewish sweetness and compassion, his willingness to negotiate with God to try to get the Big Guy to see things from our perspective a little. I was also taken aback by the idea – which he ascribes to Pat Robertson and other evangelicals – that homosexuality is “the greatest threat to marriage and the family.” Comes as a surprise to me. Frankly, the greatest threat to my shockingly blissful marriage has always been heterosexuality – namely mine and its indiscriminate attractions. Am I missing something here?
Published in General
~Paules, your remark reminds me of this Onion article.
Maybe this is an issue where life really does imitate the Onion (as the WSJ’s “Best of the Web” often reminds us).
Hey, Jonathan, I really like your comment. I’ve found this to be true not just at Ricochet but throughout the thinking conservative community, and it moves me for reasons I don’t have time to explain right now.
But to the point, here’s a true story. A guy at a Hollywood party told me: “One weekend, I threw two parties. At one, I told all my conservative friends that I was gay. At the other, I told all my gay friends I was conservative. The conservatives shrugged and said, ‘We knew that already.’ The gays never spoke to me again.”
Filling in for Steyn again:
The ironic part of that statement is that the Jews on Broadway were the straight ones. (Berlin, Kern, Loesser, Rodgers, the Gershwins) while the Baptist Cole Porter and the agnotic Noel Coward were the gay ones.
Of the prominent Jewish composers only Lorenz Hart was gay and some say that that helped lead to his alcoholism and breakup with Richard Rodgers.
Claire Berlinski, Ed. “It is unfair–grossly–not to mention irrational.”
It is unfair, and I said as much. But it’s tactically necessary. The militant gay agenda stands for promiscuity, not rights. What’s more, the militant agenda is part of the overall leftist program to subvert America’s traditional institutions and replace them with nothing more than license. I’m very much in favor of mainstreaming the gay and lesbian community. But that’s going to require that they act mainstream. Who has more influence over the militants, conservative Americans or members of their own community?
Claire Berlinski, Ed. “Your own views on the subject would be by this logic illegitimate because you’ve failed to silence Fred Phelps.”
Phelps and his ilk should be silenced, but not by court order. It’s up to members of mainstream Christian churches to do that. Phelps should be met with counter-demonstrations wherever he appears. As a matter of tactics societal sanction can be more effective than court orders.
Whether it’s gay men doing unmentionable things at a gay rights parade, or Phelps spewing his hatred, both get the same treatment. Tactics don’t have to be fair.
Michael Tee: You first have to ask yourself the question: What is marriage, properly defined, for?
After you have answered that question, then perhaps you can see why homosexuality is a threat to that institution. ·Oct 15 at 12:02pm
Um, no. Try again.
Edited on Oct 16 at 02:31 am
Let us sum up Ms. Berlinski’s thoughts:
1. Moderate gays should not silence or marginalize the radicals.
2. Moderate Muslims should not silence or marginalize the radicals.
Consistency is key.
Here we go again. Okay. But what you are getting twisted up, Ken, is that these individuals do get our gratitude for serving in the military–as human beings serving in the military–not for any other made-up category or weakness of theirs. And yes, we all have some points of failure, and for some great many of us they are recurring. But we fight againast them, as MFR described.
Here we go again. Okay. But what you are getting twisted up, Ken, is that these individuals do get our gratitude for serving in the military–as human beings serving in the military–not for any other made-up category or weakness of theirs. And yes, we all have some points of failure, and for some great many of us they are recurring. But we fight against them, as MFR described.
It is unfair, and I said as much. But it’s tactically necessary… I’m very much in favor of mainstreaming the gay and lesbian community. But that’s going to require that they act mainstream…
~Paules, though harsh, makes a point here that has to be addressed one way or the other (why I brought up the Onion article). Though I’ve personally witnessed Evangelical Christians (eg CC4C) take the likes of Phelps to task, my LGTB friends, no matter how decent their own behavior, have not been willing to call “their” militants out at all — rather, they give every evidence of supporting and admiring these militants.
A representative anecdote:
I attracted lesbian friends in college. One was a sweet young miss — pious, always modestly dressed, never used profanity, generally critical of our oversexed culture… She was, in her personal habits, a walking advertisement for mainstreaming lesbians.
Nonetheless, one day, she confided to some of us, with every evidence of admiration, the debauched spectacles she had seen at a Gay Pride parade.
I just sat there, shocked, thinking: “But sweetie, you’re nothing like this…”
Hello Andrew. Yes you are. I am glad that you continue to wrestle with this. I will try to find this Rabbi’s article in the WSJ. I wish you would have engaged my comments in one of your recent postings in which I tried to kindly address these issues that you raised then–and now again. I thought that I was as sweet as that good-natured Rabbi to whom you refer. So, were those comments wasted? Now you simply start a new blog topic on the same theme and folks like me are supposed to get tired and go away? Perhaps if you re-read those comments we can begin our discussion. You get to raise the topic–I respond using first principles, reason and logic–you and others respond interactively with ideas we all raise–and so on. See, what fun! You really are an enjoyable, admirable fellow–though I fear that you mistake, sometimes, your wit and effect for reason–artists often do. Love brother.
And so far everyone who has been involved with the opera I’m working on about Mrs. Thatcher has become a fan of her–that’s not my work, it’s her. ·Oct 15 at 11:42pm
An opera about Maggie!?! Brilliant! I do hope Claire can sing(?). If not, a walk on in her Queenie garb. C’mon! I’ve seen the picture. If only I could sing, I’d want the part of the love-sick Willie Whitelaw. If every PM has to have one, every opera about a (female) PM should have one too.
Let us sum up Ms. Berlinski’s thoughts:
1. Moderate gays should not silence or marginalize the radicals.
2. Moderate Muslims should not silence or marginalize the radicals.
Consistency is key. ·Oct 16 at 4:34am
No, no, no, Michael, you’re wandering off into some sort of weird logical wormhole. I’ve argued that the soundness of an argument does not depend upon its advocate’s ability to silence those to the radical right–or left–of him.
the government engages in “discrimination” all the time: people under 16 can’t drive, women and the handicapped can’t go into combat, etc. The problem is unjust discrimination. ·Oct 15 at 12:25pm
How is that different than defining just discrimination as applying to people who happen to have been born with a different skin color or a different gender?
Kenneth, what is the evidence that people are born with a so-called homosexual nature? I can tell you that, like Andrew, I have all sorts of heterosexual temptations. I also have temptations to anger, pettiness, jealousy…okay, the list is too long to recount. I am not ready to wade into the philosophical waters on nature and sin, but vices can come mightily easy to me. Others have a different assortment of somethings while we all share a good number of others flaws. Homosexual temptations may come more easily to some, but this is not evidence for an ordered, ontological state. We love people for being people. We acknowledge and deal appropriately with the varieties of disordered behavior. We are pretty merciful–in the big picture–with people caught in this particular habit.
And Andrew, did I miss something…what was the connection–suggested by your title–with Jews?
And so far everyone who has been involved with the opera I’m working on about Mrs. Thatcher has become a fan of her–that’s not my work, it’s her.
You’re working on an opera about Margaret Thatcher? That’s… just… spiff-a-riffic!!!
Who’s writing the music, and in what style? (I’m guessing you’re the lyricist?)
Also, can I ask, what do you think about the tension between mainstreaming gays and the more militant expressions of gay identity (a tension explored quite well, I think, in this Onion satire)?
To a certain extent, I “get” the irony of high camp. I think I even have some vague intuition as to why my otherwise normal gay friends give every evidence of admiring the histrionic, over-the-top public displays seen at Gay Pride parades, with all their shock value, despite being nothing like these public displays themselves. But…
Tell me, please tell me, that there is a movement afoot among sane, decent gay folks to distance themselves from some of the worst of these displays… Or, if there isn’t such a movement, why not?
FWIW, it is possible to have apprehensions about gay marriage while not having the slightest inkling that homosexuals are immoral (which, as it happens, is the case with me).
Reasonable, unhateful people can fear that gay marriage will lead to unintended consequences, such as (among many) the eventual inability of “proper-thinking people” to acknowledge the unique and beneficial role of fathers–and ditto mothers–in the raising of children. We’re already getting there in acedemia.
It’s arrogant in the extreme to glibly assume we can alter so fundamentally such a time-tested institution without consequence. Maybe we can, but I, for one, am far from certain. And one can hold this view w/o anything but love in his heart.
Here we need to distinguish between homosexuals and the current “gay agenda”.
Homosexuality is a human constant. How societies deal with that constant is the issue. The threat to marriage as a social institution comes not from those folks who happen to bat for the other team. It comes from a social agenda that demands that we (society at large) accept the proposition that being homosexual is just the same as being heterosexual. That is nonsense on stilts. And dangerous nonsense at that.
Any conservative with an ounce of Burkean blood in his veins must recoil at the notion that we can cavalierly dismiss millenia of social agreementon what marriage means, and why that matters.
I doubt that Mr. Klavan would dispute that. That is what those with a deep attachment to tradition are reactng against.
I’m surprised no one has referenced the work of Stanley Kurtz on this topic (Hoover Institution and NRO).
David Schmitt: “Kenneth, what is the evidence that people are born with a so-called homosexual nature?”
I used to dismiss this argument because supporters so frequently claimed the cause was genetic. If so, you could trace homosexuality in family lines like any other inherited trait. There is no evidence for the genetic claim, but there is another possibility.
I learned from a friend of mine, a bio-chemist, that the evidence now suggests that sexual orientation is the result of hormones released in the womb during pregnancy. This is further supported by studies showing that gay men have a brain chemistry more similar to women than to hetero-normative men.
Given the scientific evidence, I’m forced to concede that homosexuals might, in fact, be born that way. The problem is that the current debate is so supercharged with emotion. It seems to me logical to step back for a time and let science decide. Though I’m of the mind that this is a complex knot that will require, in addition to scientists, contributions from psychologists, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists before it’s unraveled.
I learned from a friend of mine, a bio-chemist, that the evidence now suggests that sexual orientation is the result of hormones released in the womb during pregnancy. This is further supported by studies showing that gay men have a brain chemistry more similar to women than to hetero-normative men.
Fun embryology fact: all human embryos begin life “female” in the sense that it requires the presence of a testis determining factor (TDF) to turn an embryo male. If the TDF is absent, even if the embryo is of the male (XY) genotype, the resulting baby is female.
There are even records of XY women giving birth (though this is extremely rare, and I’m not entirely clear whether this has ever happened without fertility treatments of some sort).
In addition to XY women, there are also XX men.
This is a bit off-topic, but interesting, I think.
I find it strange how some conservatives want a reduction in the State’s control over their lives, but when it comes to the gays, well its necessary to limit their relationships with the same sex, lest the bedrock of marriage fall apart. Last time I looked, heterosexuals were doing enough damage to marriage without the help of the “gay agenda”, “homosexual recruiters” in high school, or whatever paranoia rises to the surface. Feel free to start biblically stoning the heterosexual adulterers if you like, but stop the hypocrisy for once please.
When I was a younger , the idea of marriage in the gay communities was actively loathed as just another heterosexual affectation. Now once it is actively opposed, – gay people want it. Ach meine Liebe, es kann nicht sein, was nicht sein darf.
If you want to stop gay marriage then make it legal, and force the men to wear badly fitting velvet tuxedos , the women into frumpy dresses of fuchsia, lilac, peppermint, and rose pink, preferably with diamontes. The “agenda” gays can retreat into the quiet life of quite desperation like the rest of the population, or most likely will flee in gay abandon of the marriage rite.
I certainly hope AK gets this part. I am reluctant to use the word due to overuse, but it is as though some folks just need an epiphany. Yes, the real threat is not the struggling individual. I have friends that wrestle with this behavior; I care about them sincerely. This politicized, subversive pressuring for “marriage” rights as well as calling everybody names is just getting obnoxious. “Seeing” the danger of politicized homosexuality requires a perceptual capacity for pattern detection for which many people just seem not to be ready. Why language (perhaps mine is faulty) seems inadequate to the task of communicating this is equally hard to understand. It does take an openness of the spirit and a real understanding of human love. But my formation (however wanting my practice) is Catholicism. I often forget that those that do not “get” Catholicism do not appreciate the profundity of the that kind of Love.
Maybe, Mr. Klavan–though I did not appreciate it at first–perhaps there is more to your glancing connection to Judaism in your title than either you or I first realized. Perhaps the fact that you and I have not engaged (oh, you silly jokester, you know what I mean) is because of a big difference in world views that I have not yet properly taken into account. Alasdair MacIntyre has studied this problem extensively: how do people from completely different frameworks of thought communicate (see, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?). I do not claim to understand or agree with everything he proposes, and in fact have disagreed with him in person during his lecture visit to Oklahoma in 2005. Still, I would love to give it a go. Let’s “have at it” as the Brits like to say. I think we may both be in danger of learning something.
Wow! This is the longest thread I have seen on Ricochet. Thanks, Andrew! Are you following what you started?
It is interesting to note that marriage has been viewed by “centralized” religious denominations (Catholics, Episcopalians et) as a religious institution (the “sacrament” of marriage) and by more decentralized denominations (historical protenstants) as a civil institution. There are really two issues here: homosexuality and marriage. Homosexuality, from the biblical perspective is a sin, and like all sin is an offense to God, and something which is, therefore, evil in a society governed by a providential God. Such a society would be cursed for institutionalizing sin by sanctionaing any type of civil relationship between two people practicing the sin of homosexuality.
Is there not a person left on Ricochet who remembers our founding construct – that we are all created equal? You are free to disagree – but not free to claim Americanism if you do.
Is there no one who is proud that we limited government from destroying that construct in our Constitution?
There is as much choice in sexual desire as there is chocie in skin color – zero. You know that because you know yourselves. You don’t choose to desire the opposite sex or not desire the same sex – it just happends to you.
The only persons with choice are bi-sexuals who desire both. The rest of us do not choose.
Fear not the sciences of chemistry and biology. The liberals already have the media thinking that we do.
To deprive a homosexual anything we grant to ourselves is the exact equivalent of denying anything to a race.
One need not like, care for, or accept on a personal or religious level homosexuality. An American should care deeply for our governing matrix that is supposed to give us no power over them.
Fighting for the rights of your kind is honorable. Fighting for those not like you is heroic.
To deprive a homosexual anything we grant to ourselves is the exact equivalent of denying anything to a race.
·Oct 16 at 9:37am
The founding construct you quote states that we are created. If we presuppose a Creator, should we also not presuppose that He has something to say about the conduct of His creation? The fact that we are created equal means that we are all subject to the transcendant laws of a transcendant Creator. This is what is means to nation of Law (Lex Rex), not a nation of laws. Under Law there is not such thing as a homosexual, nor is there a black man, a white man, a hispanic woman or an asian child, only human beings created in the image of God, with sinful natures, in need of a redeemer.
….There are really two issues here: homosexuality and marriage. Homosexuality, from the biblical perspective is a sin, and like all sin is an offense to God, and something which is, therefore, evil in a society governed by a providential God. Such a society would be cursed for institutionalizing sin by sanctionaing any type of civil relationship between two people practicing the sin of homosexuality. ·Oct 16 at 9:37am
Both Biblical testaments have been used to oppress women, other races, “the wicked Jews”, and homosexuals
If we are a cursin’ then you better stand back as G-D will be cursing those societies that have not legislated against abominations of mixed fabrics like cotton-polyester, mixed crops on the same field (oh my tomato and basil patch is now damned for eternity).
Exceptions made of course for some adulterers like King David (cursed by killing the baby but not the guilty king/wife), Lot and his daughters (incest is okay for some?), and genocide of entire enemy tribes.
Remind me, are women still to be silent in the Church, or has that changed since last I went?
You don’t choose to desire the opposite sex or not desire the same sex – it just happends to you.
Perhaps this is true of men, but I suspect that for women, at least, it’s a bit different.
I’ve known two friends who went through a period where they were convinced that they had discovered they were lesbian (not bisexual: they really thought men would be a permanent turn-off for them). They came out to their parents. Their parents were supportive, with rainbow umbrellas and all. Then the right guy came along…
Now one is married to another dear friend of mine, and the other is, well… not even bi anymore, to hear her speak of it.
I myself feel I had some choice in my orientation. I have some capacity to feel physical attraction to another woman; what caused me to disregard this capacity is the emotional dynamic: I didn’t really want to put up with another woman besides myself day in and day out.
Now I’m married to a wonderful man. I doubt I’m so unusual in this.
Some women have some choice. LUG and “questioning” describe this reality.
Both Biblical testaments have been used to oppress women, other races, “the wicked Jews”, and homosexuals…
And I’ll have you know that both testaments have also been used to empower the marginalized.
Or haven’t you heard of the women who are saints and doctors in the Church? And haven’t you heard of the Abolitionist movement, which was incredibly Bible-based? And do you know nothing of the Christian support for Israel, at a time when many others have abandoned the nation? And the fact that many gays, for that matter, do have loving and supportive Christian friends, or are even Christian themselves?
I will not stand idly by while you adopt an attitude that’s only plausible through some combination of ignorance, shallowness, and dishonesty.
Sure, the Bible has been invoked to justify oppression, but open your eyes: anything is used to justify oppression. Or are you too thick to get that?
OK, I grew up as a church cantor, and also performing my own musical compositions in church.
Is that silent enough for you, sir?