Orthodoxy and the Gay Question

Recently, heated exchanges have broken out between Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis, and a Modern Orthodox Rabbi, who made a speech about accepting gay / homosexual Jews as long as they did not act homosexually. It is not quite clear what his intent was, but it was misconstrued by the Ultra Orthodox as being heretical and denying the entire Torah. Possibly , his remarks about homosexual love went beyond the pale.

There was an underlying current of mistrust between the parties, the Rabbi who attacked the modernist, wanted his own brother to get the prstigious job as head of the Sephardi congregation in London.

But from a TaNaKh standpoint, what can be said about this?

The Torah is quite clear in forbidding gay sex. Torah is quite explicit :

Lev: 18 וַיִּקְרָא

כב  וְאֶת-זָכָר--לֹא תִשְׁכַּב, מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה:  תּוֹעֵבָה, הִוא.

22 Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.

Rabbi Joe Dweck was saying that as long as Homosexuals do not carry out homosexual acts, they can love each other. Rabbi Basouss opposed this, and said that he is worse than the famous Louis Jacobs, who was thrown out of the United Synagogue by then Chief Rabbi Brodie – for denying that the Torah was revealed to Moses.

I am not interested in these rabbis jockeying for power and position, but only in what the Torah says. The Torah forbids all sexual and intimate conduct between men. The apologists for gays say that having a gay constitution is not itself forbidden, as long as it is not put into practice.

The problem is, that gays cannot really be “converted” to become heterosexual. So welcoming them and investing time and energy in them to encourage them to be straight is a waste of time and energy. Furthermore, in the Western world, there are human rights that protect gays from discrimination (supposedly). In Russia and Islamic countries, it is still illegal to be a practicing homosexual.

So those who take a strictly Biblical approach, must still be careful about hate crimes, even telling jokes could be punishable offences in some jurisdictions. It is no mitzvah to be arrested or jailed by the secular authorities.

There is one last point - it is easy to hate or ostracize gay people, but I do not see this as a choice, it is an orientation that people are born with. So why does the Creator create such people and then tell them not to be that way?