Saturday 27 September 2014

Can Jews Be Gay Openly

By Karina Frost


Judaism is known to be one of the major religions in the world and is also known to have strict rules when it comes to homosexuality. Now the Jews are in fact one of the groups that do not condone homosexual acts because they consider it to be a sin. So if one is gay and Jew, then he will most likely ask himself can Jews be gay or not even if some of them are born like that.

Now one thing to understand would be that Judaism does not have anything against homosexuals. What they do not condone to would be homosexual acts which means the erotic acts that a person will do with another of the same sex. In other words, there can be homosexuals but they cannot act upon their homosexual urges as it is the acts that are considered as sins in the faces of the Rabbis.

Of course before anyone would make any comment on this, one would first have to take a look as to what the basis of this teaching is. Of course the first place to look would be the Bible and the verse that teaches this is found in Leviticus chapter eight. Now if one would read it, he will find a verse that says that a man cannot lie with another man otherwise it is a sin.

Now the thing about this law is that there has been no written reason as to why this law was created. Many Jewish teachers would argue that it is unnatural since the Bible only mentioned there to be a man and a woman in the beginning. It is because of this that homosexuality is a perversion created by humans.

The thing about this reason is that there actually is no basis for it which means that it is not very convincing. It is for this reason that there is an interpretation that was created by Bar Kaparrah in Talmud. He claims that homosexuality is against the teaching of marriage and children which can be found in the Torah.

Basically, the Torah strictly states that a man cannot be with another man as this is an abomination. So this might strike a question as to how they treat lesbians. Since the Torah only mentioned the union and sexual acts between two men, then most people would assume that lesbianism is allowed.

Now the Rabbis would actually teach that lesbianism is also not allowed as well. Of course their reason for saying so is that it is also an act of homosexuality which goes against procreation. However, lesbians are not put under as much pressure as gay men since lesbians are not explicitly mentioned in the Torah.

So basically, what their teaching about homosexuality is simply that they do not allow the act. The rabbis do acknowledge the fact that homosexuals are actually born that way. However, what they do not allow is the act of homosexuality between two people of the same sex. So if one is Jewish but is also a gay or a lesbian at the same time, then he or she does not need to worry as he or she can keep his or her orientation but is safe as long as he or she does not act upon it.




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