Page 1 of 1

Judaism begins accepting homosexual rabbis

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 11:10 am
by Ivellious
Interesting article. Apparently accepting gay and lesbian leaders and rabbis is already commonplace for American Jews, but in Israel that idea has been met with more resistance.

http://news.yahoo.com/jewish-movement-i ... 48883.html

Any thoughts on this? I know some Christian churches openly accept homosexual pastors or preachers. It's also interesting that Jews accept women as rabbis and worship leaders as a whole, another thing banned in the OT.

Re: Judaism begins accepting homosexual rabbis

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 11:21 am
by Jac3510
It's not surprising. With exception to Orthodox Jews, the rest are "liberal" (insofar as they don't view the Tanakh as inspired and binding). And given that the world as a whole has gotten away from classical philosophy, they don't have access to the common, non-religious arguments against it. So, why not? Because a bunch of religious people say so? Because a book they don't have to follow because it itself was written by religious people a long time ago in contexts that makes some (or all) of it irrelevant today?

I tell people all the time, "Why not?" is an important and often overlooked question. Shy of a solid reason against it, if homosexuals want to become rabbis, that seems to provide reason to let them. And since all the arguments against it tend to come from theology and philosophy--two areas they reject--they can't come up with a reason. It's entirely predictable.

In fact, I only opened the article to answer for myself which Jews were now accepting homosexual rabbis. I knew it wouldn't be the Orthodox Jews. So it's the Conservatives. My thoughts--okay. As Gilson said, we don't think as we want, but rather as we can. Some in their movement might fight it awhile, but those in their movement are wrong insofar as the arguments they might employ against it presume positions they have already rejected. In other words, the proponents of this are just being more consistent than the detractors. That's why history is the laboratory of philosophy. What remains to be seen is what the effects of the broad acceptance of the homosexual "agenda" will have on any given society.