Attitude towards homosexuals
Hello.
I recently read the chapter on attitudes toward homosexuals in the third book of the trilogy.
The rabbi writes there that he does not see any moral problem with male intercourse, but only a problem on the religious level.
According to Kant’s categorical imperative, a moral act is one that we should accept as a general law. This means that (moral) support for homosexuals should take into account that this will become a “general law.”
My argument is that there is a fundamental moral flaw in the matter of severing and destroying the human root.
In other words, we have a moral obligation to continue the existence of the human race and bring children into the world.
It is not moral to allow a man or woman, who is biologically capable of bearing a child, to abstain from doing so.
Even the Talmudic sages (except for Ben Azzai) married women and had children.
I would love to understand more comprehensively why you don’t see this as a moral problem.
(I don’t mean the general move, but this specific point. I agree with and support the overall move.)
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What is the difference between a moral problem and a problem on the religious level??
Didn't the commandments of the Torah, whether they have a point or not, come to express the correct morality for man?
Absolutely not. See column 15 briefly, and in the lesson series on Halacha and Morality, and also in the third book of the trilogy.
So I looked at column 15. In the section on – “Why doesn't the law enter the moral realm”?
You wrote – Each of us understands for ourselves what morality is and what is permissible and what is forbidden, and there is no need for the Torah to detail us in matters of morality… There is no Jewish morality and Gentile morality…
So the Germans understood that it was moral to solve the Jewish problem because that is how everyone understands it for themselves???
And you wrote – Morality depends on the norms that develop in different times and places, and therefore the Torah does not want to set rules for it.
So this contradicts the fact that everyone understands for themselves. Because in the developing norms, I personally do not always develop at the same pace as everyone else, and the world and its countries do not always develop at the same pace of social norms. And what is moral for one person is not for another.
A simple example – I think that matters of modesty have a moral aspect and many others think so. There are many people in the whole world (especially women) who do not understand the connection to morality. So it is not related???
Maybe on the contrary, maybe the changing norms in the world have distanced and degraded us from the true morality of the Torah. Which is not always perceived by the human mind. And perhaps in ancient times people canceled their minds against the morality of the Torah and realized that there is a morality here that is higher than their understanding. Or they understood that morality more.
By the way, in matters of modesty and incest (including the matter of male intercourse) the Torah explicitly writes at the end of Parashat Achre Mot –
Do not defile yourself with any of these, for in all of these the nations that I am sending out before you have become defiled
And the land will be defiled and I will punish it, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants…
For all the abominations of God have the men of the land done before you, and the land is defiled
And the land shall not vomit you out in your defilement, as it vomited out the nation that was before you
Uncleanness, vomit, abomination – explicit expressions of immorality – What is there to discuss at all???
All these questions were asked and discussed in detail. They were all answered there and in other places.
The rabbi, if you have the time and energy, I really recommend listening to the rabbi's series of lessons on halacha and morality by Rabbi Michi. The rabbi explains the difference clearly there and answers all your questions.
In the past, homosexuals married and had children. Homosexuality existed either as a class issue, as in ancient Greece, or as a side effect of a polygamous society in which a small group of men enjoyed many women and a significant group of men had no women at all and therefore resorted to homosexual activity. Therefore, the Sephardic rabbis who lived in a polygamous society feared incest, while the Ashkenazi rabbis who lived in a monogamous society did not.
And I certainly agree with the questioner that a homosexual also needs to have intercourse and have sex with a woman because of the categorical commandment of having sex.
In private law, it is between a person and God. In public law, the public can decide whether it wishes that two men be allowed (or forbidden) to kiss in public, etc. The public decides what it wants. The problem arises when government officials decide for the general public things that are contrary to the public's wishes.
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