mardi 23 septembre 2014

Can Jews Be Gay Or Not

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.

Now to see as to where this kind of teaching came from, one would first have to look at the Bible as a source. Now the main source as to where the scholars got this teaching would of course be from Leviticus eighteen verses twenty two. This verse states that a man cannot lie with another man like he would with a woman otherwise it is abhorrent thing.

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.

Of course since this claim had no basis, people were not convinced of its validity at all. Now Bar Kaparrah tried to make a conclusion about this issue in Talmud by stating another teaching in the Torah. He claims that the Torah emphasizes the importance of marriage and procreation with homosexuality posing as a threat to it.

So if the Torah states that a man cannot be together with another man, then one would also probably ask where this leaves lesbians. One would also probably ask whether lesbianism is allowed in this religion. Well lesbianism may not be as frowned upon, but it is still not 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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