On Deviance, Expertise, and Values – A Response to Prof. Yoram Yuval’s Article, “They Are Not Deviants,” Musaf Shabbat, Parashat Ekev (Column 25)

Yosef:
I read the article in the Shabbat supplement and wondered to myself how long it would take until Rabbi Michi responded. More power to you.

Chaim:
Another point that arose from his remarks is that, according to what we know today, homosexuality is not a phenomenon whose causes are genetic alone. Two identical twins—one can be homosexual and the other heterosexual. From this it follows that, as a matter of public policy, there cannot be halakhic acquiescence in the forbidden act, even on the level of “the Merciful One exempts one who is coerced.” For the commandment is part of the environmental influence, whose role is to prevent the prohibition where there is choice.
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Rabbi:
What arose from his remarks was not that it depends on choice, but only that not everything is genetic. That is not the same thing. By the way, in my opinion this is part of the distortion, or at least tendentiousness, in how the matter is being presented. What emerges from his words is that there is no choice, whereas as far as I know this question is considered open.
Beyond that, the prohibition concerns the act and not the inclination. The inclination certainly does not depend on choice (however difficult that may be).
And third, there is of course the dispute over whether the act is permitted or not, which is what I discussed.

Homosapiens:
With all due respect to the rabbi, I fear he did not understand Mr. Yuval’s words.

A. The term “deviation” is definitely social and cultural. Halakha does not presume to determine whether a certain transgression is a perversion, only whether it is forbidden. What that says about the transgressor is of no concern to halakha—perhaps only to mashgichim in small yeshivas..
B. There are two questions here: whether homosexuality is included in what psychiatry itself has defined as a deviation or not.
If rabbis want to determine for themselves values and definitions for mental illnesses and sexual deviations, let that please them. The question is whether they listen to the experts, who in the past determined that this was a deviation and then retracted.
In the same way that smoking was once healthy and today is dangerous, no rabbi will say that he maintains the view of the earlier authorities.
Psychiatry is what set the boundaries in the first place, not halakha.
C. True, even if every psychiatrist were to recommend having sex with the same sex, it would still remain forbidden.
And the problem is not with the halakhic prohibition but with the rabbinic claim that this is a deviation, even though the prevailing medical opinion is that it is not a deviation.
The most rabbis can say is that this is a deviation from the path of the Torah…

This is Yuval’s main point: you are trying to capture the queen in her own home—to use the terms, and as a result the social attitude, of psychiatry regarding people with whom psychiatry, and halakha, have nothing to do.
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Rabbi:
It seems to me that I understood his words very well, and in fact your words express a misunderstanding both of Yuval’s intention and of my own. I’ll explain.
We have no dispute at all about the meaning of a term. I am willing to accept his definition of “deviation” in the professional context. My main claim is only that this is a definition, not an assertion. And therefore, in a different context, one can use this term with a different meaning. I gave an example (such as liquidity) of using the same concept with a different meaning depending on the context. And of course there are many more. Have you ever heard someone say to his friend, “Are you crazy?” (without consulting a certified psychiatrist), or “Have you lost your mind?” (without consulting a brain researcher or a physicist specializing in mechanics)? And this does not happen only in metaphors; there are just ordinary uses of the same term with different meanings.
If the dispute were about the meaning of a term (a completely uninteresting dispute, which no one intended to conduct here, neither Yuval nor I), there would have been no need at all to resort to a model about the relationship between a rabbi and a professional. Such a model pertains to factual claims, not to dictionary definitions. For those, it would be better to consult a dictionary.
So much for your misunderstanding of his words. Now for your misunderstanding of mine.
I never claimed that halakha determines who is deviant. What I did claim is that in a halakhic context and in a religious society (where it is accepted that the act is value-wise forbidden), it is perfectly reasonable to define homosexuality as a deviation. That’s all. In your terms, I would say that Yuval is actually trying to capture the queen in our own home—in other words, to explain to us how we, as halakhic people or believing people, are supposed to define the concept of deviation in our own sense. In your opinion, should we change the terminology for a woman who strays from her husband, because psychiatry does not see adultery as a deviation? (Again, this is of course a value dispute, which in no way concerns the meaning of concepts or scientific-factual knowledge.)

I cannot refrain from one more somewhat pedantic remark. I enjoyed your “two questions.” If I understood correctly, one is “Is homosexuality included?” and the second is: “If not?” I assume that in your view there are also two different remarks in what I wrote here. There you have it again: use of the same concept (“two”) in two (!) different meanings.
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Homosapiens:
First, regarding the pedantic remark: unfortunately, the second question dropped out, and it is whether the rabbis mean that same deviation in question. Or whether they mean deviation according to the Torah, which is what you included in your response. But since I have never encountered the term “deviation” in Talmudic literature—and your honor should correct me if he has—I assumed they meant what psychiatry determined and the meaning it gave it. That is to say, if the man is deviant, he is supposed to be treated as deviant, like a person who sleeps with corpses.

That aside, this is a semantic question and not important, and surely not the reason you wrote, as I assumed, a long article.

But now, in your response, it indeed becomes clear that you did not understand me, and that you really did mean semantics alone…
Sorry, I have no interest at all in discussing whether rabbis are “allowed” to call human beings deviants in the same way they call a woman who speaks with a man in a closed room a wayward woman. That is a dispute that even in yeshivas would be met with a wrinkled nose and dismissal.

And back to Mr. Yuval’s words: his claim is excellent, and you still have not fully understood it. If the rabbis accept psychiatric definitions as determinative, and if that is what they mean by the word “deviant,” then psychiatry’s opinion has changed and that should be accepted by the rabbis.
But indeed Mr. Yuval erred in thinking that the rabbis meant deviation in its professional definitions; rather, they meant halakhic deviation.
That is to say, every Sabbath desecrator is a deviant…
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Rabbi:
I assume that Rabbi Levinstein did not mean deviation according to the Torah. He meant to express his own reasoning that this is a deviation, except that the context in which the words were said is a Torah context and a religious society that holds male homosexual intercourse to be forbidden. I explained in my remarks that I have no interest whatsoever in a semantic dispute. The statement that male homosexual intercourse is a deviation from halakha is a banal and trivial statement. Even the Sadducees agree with it, and that is not what is under discussion.
Put differently, the universal meaning of “deviation” is someone who has a natural tendency to do forbidden/improper things. The dispute is over the question of what things are forbidden. Secular society and most psychiatric associations believe that theft is forbidden and pathological love (not for a whole person) is improper, but male homosexual intercourse is not. Rabbi Levinstein, by contrast, expresses the halakhic position that male homosexual intercourse too is forbidden. What is unclear here? And precisely because of this, Rabbi Levinstein would probably also agree that a Sabbath desecrator is not a deviant (because he has no tendency toward Sabbath desecration, but rather a decision to do it).

Since I brought the example of the sotah, which appears in the Torah itself and has an entire tractate dealing with this concept, I find it astonishing that you again repeat this nonsense as though psychiatry coined the term and owns it. And even if it had coined it, that would not give it copyright. This is a value dispute, not a semantic one, and one should not deny that there is a real dispute here. Rabbi Levinstein is essentially arguing that Torah-based psychiatry should include homosexuality in its DSM and treat it, or at least try to look for effective and non-dangerous treatment. Is that a semantic dispute in your opinion? In your opinion, is he forbidden to argue this just because a collection of people with a certain agenda decided otherwise and captured this term for themselves? With all due respect, these are really just empty words.

In short, it seems to me that we are grinding water. The matter is as clear as day. The only thing that is not trivial is precisely how a religious person could fail to define homosexuality as a deviation (for example, me). That requires explanation, not Rabbi Levinstein’s words. And my explanation is fairly complex. Regarding secular people, I judge them by their own principles (this does not permit the act, but it casts them in a different light). Regarding religious people, if they are not careful about the prohibition itself (the act, not the inclination), there may perhaps be room for such a definition; but since I do not know who does this and who does not, I do not deal with it. And additionally, since the expression is insulting, perhaps it is better not to use it even if it is correct at the semantic level.
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Homosapiens:
It is not fitting for the rabbi to mock the spelling mistakes of someone debating with him, especially since I did not write the word “immersion” with regard to who coined the concept of deviation.
I wrote it as a typing mistake for the word “treated,” and instead of typing a p I typed a b.

Your honor mistakenly uses the concept of deviation from the case of a wayward woman. There it is not a deviation from social and cultural norms, nor does it express a mental distortion, as a certain rabbi told me when he instructed thousands of students that homosexuality is a mental distortion, irrespective of the prohibition. The prohibition stems from the deviation, not the deviation from the prohibition.
The deviation stated with regard to the woman is a deviation from the straight path of fidelity to her husband.
And if a woman who secludes herself with a strange man is a wayward woman, then someone who kept the Sabbath all his life would be considered wayward if he began to desecrate it—for he has strayed from the straight path.

This is not a sexual perversion. That is not what the poet meant.

That is what Yuval was objecting to. And that is enough.
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Rabbi:
Where did you see any mockery in my words? There was no mockery in them whatsoever. I was speaking about the “baptism” of the concept of deviation. That terminology is taken from the philosopher Saul Kripke, who speaks of baptism as giving meaning to a concept, like the baptism of a baby in which he receives a name. What I claimed is that the concept of deviation was not “baptized” by psychiatry.

I do not know what this or that rabbi told you, and it is not really important to the discussion. The dispute here is value-based and not factual, and therefore the psychiatrist has no added value in it.
But that rabbi’s own words are also not innocent. His claim that this is a mental distortion stems from the religious context. He interprets the Torah, which forbids it, and assumes that if it forbids it then apparently the thing is a deviation in its eyes. This is a completely legitimate interpretation of halakha.

This is a deviation and that is a deviation. But truly the dispute is unnecessary. The term “deviation” does not belong to psychiatrists, and by all accounts it existed long before them even apart from the question of what a wayward woman is in the Torah. It is also used by the general public in various contexts with no connection to the psychiatric meaning. I really do not understand what the dispute here is about. Do you want to give only psychiatrists the right to determine for people in what meaning to use the term “deviant” (including the whole value system underlying it)? Enjoy. I do not give them that right. I do not even give them the right to determine what requires treatment and what does not. That too is a value judgment, not a professional-factual one, and the dispute is only about that.

Homosapiens:
And pardon the spelling mistakes. It can’t be edited.

Shlomo:
Just a remark regarding the comparison to kleptomania.
The reason homosexuality is not a deviation while kleptomania is, is that a kleptomaniac is attracted to something forbidden and bad—namely theft. Whereas the homosexual (according to Prof. Yuval) is not attracted to the bad thing itself (male homosexual intercourse) but to the “whole person,” and that is why he is not deviant.
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Rabbi:
Shlomo, I did not understand your remark. You are repeating what I wrote. That is exactly what I claimed: that the difference is value-based, not professional. In the halakhic conception, male homosexual intercourse too is bad.

Avrum:
I was persuaded by your words, but precisely a side remark at their beginning left me wondering—about the separation between morality and halakha. Are you Leibowitzian in your approach to halakha? And how can one ignore the Torah’s use of “abomination” in this context?
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Rabbi:
I explained this at length in column 15. See also the talkbacks after it, where the issue of “abomination” came up.

Arik:
With all due respect, I think there is a significant flaw in your argument—a flaw that is also connected to your article regarding expertise and that same “value-decider” you speak about. I’ll begin with two small mistakes that, in my opinion, clarify the central flaw in your remarks. First, when you gave examples of a “value-decider,” in the same breath you referred to the legislator and the judge. Contrary to that presentation, in practice these are completely different roles whose point of decision comes at a different junction. Second, in your article you presented an imaginary process of formulating a traffic law. In the process you described, at the first junction the expert presents a risk graph. At the second junction the value-decider determines what is “dangerous,” and at the third junction the value-decider (is this the same decider?!) determines the normative attitude toward driving that was defined as dangerous. But a legal process operates differently, and differs substantially from your schematic description. For the sake of simplicity I will use your example in relation to the situation in Israel, but this is true of many legal systems and many examples. In the legal process, the legislator consults experts and formulates a general law. For example, section 62 of the Traffic Ordinance states that it is forbidden to drive at a speed that, under the circumstances of the case, endangers the public. The determination is very general. From that stage, the general statement is handed over to experts, in your terminology (what in the modern era are called bureaucrats or civil servants). Thus, traffic experts determine on each road what is presumed dangerous, and traffic police decide when the risk constitutes, in their opinion, a violation of the law (the decisions of civil servants will not always be identical—for example, sometimes police decide to issue a ticket only above 10% of the speed the traffic experts determined). If there is a dispute over the civil servants’ decision, the dispute is resolved by judges, who, at one level or another, operate within the general framework given to them, and whose expertise lies in interpretation and judgment for resolving disputes. To be more specific: in traffic law, the legislator determines that endangering the public is forbidden, and the expert determines when it is considered that you endangered the public.
To clarify the point, I will note that this is also how the legislator acts regarding what are called “the mentally disabled” (people coping with mental illness). The legislator determines that the mentally disabled are to be treated, and at the same time determines that whoever defines who that mentally disabled person is, is an expert (a psychiatrist). The legislator himself does not intervene in the psychiatrist’s determination but is satisfied with a general and broad determination. The hidden assumption in Yoram Yuval’s article is that Jewish halakhic sages engaged in enacting ordinances operate in a similar format to legislators. They make a general determination and from that stage hand over field determinations to experts. Sometimes, in cases of dispute, decisors will come (they are not always the same people..) and express their opinion on the dispute.
In my opinion, your central flaw lies in the schematic model you created regarding the creation of law. There is a difference between a person whose role is to enact regulations or generally and broadly guide a path, and a person required to decide disputes; and between both of them and the expert who in practice implements the general directive according to his professional knowledge. In setting a social norm, expertise has significant involvement (more than you describe..). It plays a substantial role and in practice shapes day-to-day behavior.
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Rabbi:
Hello Arik.

First and foremost, I will say that ironically there is a confusion in your remarks between facts and values, exactly as I showed exists אצל Yuval.
When you make a claim about the way a value determination is made, you must distinguish between what ought to happen and what happens in practice. Even if you are right (and you are not; see below) that the legislator hands the decision over to experts, does that mean that this is how it should and ought to be done? The question whether my model is correct or not is not empirical but normative. I am speaking about what is right and not about what happens in practice. I do not suspect for a moment that our legislator is more intelligent and understands matters better than Yoram Yuval. Believe me, I am far from thinking so.
In short, do you dispute that determining what counts as deviation is not a professional matter but a normative-social-legal one? Even if Yoram Yuval assumes that halakha operates like the legislator (according to the mistaken picture you painted of its operation), is it serious to think that from a halakhic standpoint homosexuality ceased to be a prohibition (or a deviation) the moment psychiatry changed its mind? Moreover, in your opinion does the accepted social use of the concept “deviation” always match the psychiatric use of that concept? You understand that it does not.
Therefore, even if you were right that the legislator does not act as I wrote (and you are not; see below), that would mean nothing. I would criticize him too.

So much for my principled critique of your remarks. But you are mistaken on the factual plane as well: the legislator does not operate this way even in practice. Not only is it not always so; on the level of principle it never happens this way.
With respect to our example: the legislator is the one who decides whether homosexuality is forbidden or not, not psychiatry. As far as I know, there is no law that forbids deviations (in the psychiatric sense) while leaving the decision what counts as deviation to the psychiatrist. The legislator is the one who decides which deviation is forbidden and which is not (and in truth society is the one that decides what is deviation in its eyes). The legislator (and society) decided to stop relating to homosexuality that way, but this is not because psychiatry decided so; if anything, the opposite is true (psychiatry was dragged along after society, since this is a value question and not a scientific-factual one. I explained this both here and in my original article).
The same goes for traffic decisions. If you had read the article I linked to, you would have seen that I said there that sometimes, for convenience, the legislator hands the decision itself to the expert or to us ourselves (in the case of driving that is dangerous under the circumstances). Thus, for example, regarding the permitted speed, instead of consulting an expert on floor A and then deciding on one’s own on floors B and C, the legislator hands all the stages to the expert on the professional committee, for the expert certainly does this no less well than anyone else (including the legislator himself). My claim is that he does not do it better.
Moreover, that very decision itself (to hand over the decision about the permitted speed on a road to an expert, and to which expert) is a decision made by the value-decider. He merely delegates authority to the expert for the sake of simplicity. Likewise, the prohibition on dangerous driving under the circumstances at most hands the decision to us as a delegation of authority. The legislator forbade it, but for the sake of simplicity and to leave himself flexibility, he did not enter into a detailed definition of the matter, and his decision (!) is to leave it to us. By the way, legally it is the judge who will decide whether I in fact drove dangerously under the circumstances or not, not I (I am only required to drive that way, but the authority to decide whether it was dangerous or not is not handed to me in any way. Only to a value-decider—legislator or judge). The same is true exactly with regard to the mentally disabled.

Regarding your comment about the difference between a judge and a legislator, this was not a slip of the pen. Future scholars of my writings will be able to see that I deliberately added this here (it seems to me that in the original article I spoke about the legislator and not about the judge), for the judge definitely makes value decisions just like the legislator. I already gave examples of this in the previous passage. Usually these are decisions of the type of setting a threshold of reasonableness for different laws (what I called here decisions belonging to floor B: who is mentally disabled, what is a reasonable person, what is dignified existence, and so on). These are often entrusted to the judge and not the legislator, because it is difficult to fix them rigidly in the wording of the law and each case must be examined on its own merits. And again, it is the legislator who authorized the judge to do this. The distinction between judge and legislator is far from sharp, but everyone today understands that positivism is much too naive. The judge is not engaged only in technique (logical deduction from the wording of the law), but also legislates to one degree or another (there is, of course, a dispute about the proper dosage of judicial legislation. See Aharon Barak).
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Arik:
Thank you for the detailed response. For convenience I will divide my reply into numbers.

1. The claim that the legislator delegates authority to experts is possible, but in my opinion it is not precise. The legislator does not determine who is “mentally disabled” or what dangerous speed is (and so on). In my opinion this is also correct from a value standpoint (below) and also the reality in practice.
If I understood you correctly, then in your opinion the legislator delegates authority. This seems a bit like begging the question. From where do you infer that the legislator delegated his authority to the psychiatrist, rather than that he finished his role when he set the general rule?

On another plane I will note that in the Israeli context, in the 1950s, when the legislator prohibited homosexuality, a public official (our acquaintance Chaim Cohen) acted to get the legislator to amend the Criminal Law Ordinance (at that time the negative attitude toward homosexuality was much more common). When Chaim Cohen failed to get the value-decider to change the law, he issued an internal directive to the police not to investigate and to the prosecution not to indict. Does this event fit with the model you presented? (Of course on the assumption—for the sake of argument—that Chaim Cohen’s conduct was proper.)

2. The substantive discussion of what a legislator ought to determine in law and what ought to be transferred to the executive branch for decision (in the terminology here: “experts”) has received extensive treatment in the legal literature. I won’t go deeply into the discussion here mainly because I assume you are broadly familiar with the approaches. I will only note that in my opinion (and I’m not the only one..) legal rules can be formulated broadly and generally. Setting a value system at narrow resolutions has a wide range of negative implications that at times it is proper to avoid. In a certain sense, this is connected to the degree of value pluralism maintained by a given legal system.

3. Regarding halakha and homosexuality. Let us begin with what is not disputed: there is a prohibition on male homosexual intercourse in halakha. In the Torah this conduct was called an abomination (an expression that exists in other contexts as well, such as robbery). But after these agreements many questions arise. Is this prohibition ontological, or should it be observed because of the command? In other words, you could argue that you do not know the reason nowadays to prohibit male homosexual intercourse, but it is the Torah’s command and therefore you observe it. In addition, from here one can raise further questions about the extent of the power of halakhic sages to turn from judges into legislators. Can halakhic sages, or should they, engage in judicial legislation as in the case of lice on Shabbat? Did they not act that way with regard to electricity on Shabbat? In your opinion, is male homosexual intercourse ethically improper because of the religious command or irrespective of it?

4. Regarding the discussion you presented that society is the one that shapes the norms and legal professionals react. On this point we have no dispute. I think Robert Cover formulated it nicely in Nomos and Narrative. But there is one point in your remarks that I did not understand. If we agree that law reacts to society, then why can halakha not also react to society, as Israeli law did?

5. I do not agree with you at all regarding your claim that the judge is the one who will decide whether the driving was dangerous or not. That is the police officer’s decision. The judge’s role is to decide a dispute that arose (only if one arose) between the lawbreaker and the state.

6. Regarding judge and legislator. Here too I do not agree with you. The difference is enormous. There are those who criticize judges and claim that they exceed their authority. But on your view, if the rabbi (the religious value-decider) is both legislator and judge, what limits him from adapting halakha to his opinion? Can the rabbi-legislator permit male homosexual intercourse?
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Rabbi:
As a rule, not one section of your remarks here bears on my post in any way, or even on my previous response to you. I am somewhat embarrassed by this collection of points and do not really know what to do with it. What is it saying? Where does it connect to what I said? Which of these things did I dispute and which did I not?
In my remarks I drew a line between professional statements and normative statements. Are you arguing with that? Then how did we get to the question whether a police officer or a judge determines dangerousness under the circumstances?

1. Chaim Cohen was Attorney General and wanted to change the law. Like a judge, an Attorney General also has a certain legislative status (for example, they can refrain from enforcement if there is no public interest, etc.), and therefore he wanted to work to change the law and perhaps even contribute in practice to changing it. What does that prove? What does it have to do with us? How did we get to Chaim Cohen? My basic claim is based on a philosophical insight that disconnects facts from values (the naturalistic fallacy). From here I derived the conclusion that the legislator always delegates, even if only by implication. I am not begging the question but making a claim that I think is correct. That is all. What exactly is the dispute here about?
2. Here too the remarks have not the slightest connection to our discussion. This discussion itself is normative and as such is entrusted to the legislator. And if he decides not to intervene or to delegate authority, that too is a decision. The policy of drafting laws in no way that I can discern connects to our discussion.
3. Again I did not understand what all this has to do with our discussion. The nature of halakhic prohibitions is an important question, but why is it being dragged in here? The question whether halakhic sages engage in legislation is a less important question. Clearly they do. Moreover, there is no such thing as turning from judges into legislators, because, as I explained, the judge too is a minor legislator (in terms of the logical division between the act of legislation and the act of application).
4. Halakha certainly can react to society. Where does this bear on anything I said?
5. As far as I am concerned, police officer and judge are in the same status. Neither legislates. But I also disagree with you about the distinction between them. Again, irrelevant to us.
6. There is a difference between judge and legislator, but it is a difference of quantity. There is some measure of legislating in judging by all accounts (the dispute is only about the proper dosage, as I wrote). This does not mean that the judge can do whatever he wants, but in his interpretation of the law he serves as a minor legislator. The same is true of the rabbi. He has quite a few possibilities, but he is bound by the law.
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Arik:
For the sake of the discussion I will focus my question. In my opinion your three-stage model is mistaken, or at the very least too simplistic. For clarity I will note that in my opinion it is simplistic both as to what ought to be and as to what is.

I’ll begin with what is. In your model, the “expert” only presents data and the value-decider decides. But in reality, in many cases the expert is also the one who decides. In your response you answered that this is a delegation of authority. Let us assume that this is correct. Then at the very least we will agree that there are cases in which a fourth stage occurs in your model, in which a certain decision is made by the expert. In your model there is no such option; a value decision must be made by a “value-decider.” That is not the situation in practice.

Regarding what ought to be: in your model there is a difference between an expert and a value-decider. The boundary line between those types or roles is not presented by you. I assume that on your view the first deals with facts and the second with values. In your model only the second makes the decisions. To this I ask: why? Is a model in which the value-decider decides only at the macro level while the expert decides at the micro level a worse model? If in your opinion the answer is yes, on what do you base that? I think not. In other words, there are cases in which the desirable situation is that the value-decider not descend to certain resolutions for various reasons. In such cases the decision will be with the expert.

An example that may clarify my question can be found in the Israeli law’s treatment of the “mentally disabled.” In this case the “value-decider” did not decide the question of who counts as a person with a mental disability (despite the fact that this is a value question of the highest order). The value-decider only determined the special attitude and assistance required for a person who falls under that definition. The actual decision what kinds of people will count as “mentally disabled” and which person will be so defined was handed entirely to experts operating in light of the DSM. I will note that similarly this is the case with many laws in many countries. For example, in almost the whole world this is the approach to accounting standards. These standards stem from value decisions. The decisions are entrusted to those who in your model belong to the category of experts.

For simplicity, I will set aside the other points for now.
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Rabbi:
I found nothing new here beyond what we already discussed in the previous messages. I do not understand what is unclear here. Maybe I have a deficient capacity for explanation, but the matters are clear and there is no place in the world to disagree with them.

You keep mixing facts and values, or what ought to be and what is. My claim is that a value decision is essentially made by the value-decider (this is virtually a tautology, so how can one dispute it?). And if decision-making authority is delegated to someone else, that does not essentially change the situation. I wrote this explicitly in my article (which I do not know whether you read). In any case, in no situation, whether desirable or actual, is there a fourth stage, and my model is perfectly precise.

The model does not describe reality but determines its essential structure. Value decisions are made by a value-decider. Period. True, sometimes the plumber does electrical repairs, but then he is functioning as an electrician and not as a plumber. If he comes to offer his professional opinion as a plumber about the electrical system (that is exactly what Yuval did), I will argue against him that he should either change hats (and then he is acting as an electrician, and must not use his professional mantle as a plumber) or leave.

All this has nothing at all to do with resolutions. The difference is not in resolution but in the type of decision and the stage in the process. What has resolution to do with the matter?

The subject of the mentally disabled has already been worn out with us. Even if you repeat it a hundred thousand times, it will not change reality. Such a decision is judicial and not professional. And if the legislator handed it to a professional for reasons of convenience, that is perfectly fine, but it does not essentially change the division of roles. The professional is acting here by the power of the legislator, and he has no professional authority to determine something value-based. I already explained that such decisions can be made by any person (since there is no expertise in values), and therefore there is logic in handing them to the professional. But that professional is not acting here in his professional hat but in the hat of a sub-legislator (who received power from the legislator to act in his name).
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Arik:
If so, then your claim and model are indeed a tautology. What follows is that your sentence is always true, but it also says nothing. Even logically it is not clear how you wanted to refute someone else’s opinion with a tautology?

If I return to Yoram Yuval’s article: according to your model, he presented what “value-deciders” in the fields of medicine and psychology think and how they changed their minds. You applied your model to his article and claimed that he made an “expertise fallacy.” But according to your position there can be no such thing as an “expertise fallacy,” because on your model, from the moment the psychiatrist made a value decision, he made it in the hat of a value-decider and not of an expert.
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Rabbi:
Hello Arik.
I truly cannot understand whether this is your stubbornness or a colossal deficiency in explanatory ability suddenly being revealed in me (I confess and am ashamed—I was not aware of it until now).

The claim that a value decision is made by a value-decider is a tautology, and so in your opinion as well. Fine.
What I claimed was not the tautology, but a different claim: that determining what counts as deviation is a value determination and not a professional factual one. With that too you agreed all along. Even finer.
From that I inferred that determining what counts as deviation is not within the sphere of professional authority of a psychiatrist or anyone else. And lo and behold—about that you argue.
So now notice that there is a contradiction in your remarks: you accept that determining what counts as deviation is a value decision, and you also accept that a value decision is supposed to be made by a value-decider and not by a professional (for this is a tautology). So how can it be that you argue over the fact that determining what counts as deviation should belong to a value-decider, and insist on handing it over to a professional? I am astonished!
In a valid logical argument the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. That means that whoever accepts the premises must necessarily also adopt the conclusion. It seems to me that the expression that represents this contradiction in the most perfect way was supplied by you later in your remarks: “value-deciders from the field of medicine and psychology.” That is really an impressive oxymoron.

Of course there can be value-deciders who are (purely by chance) also psychologists or doctors—just as there can be value-deciders who are bleary-eyed dwarfs, cobblers, or polar bears. But in that case those doctors or psychologists cannot determine for me in their capacity as experts their value meaning, for they are not acting by virtue of their expertise but as value-deciders. They can only recommend a meaning of their own, and that is perfectly fine. What I asked is that they remove their hats as experts when they do so, and not present the matter as a scientific finding.
In other words, there is no such thing as “value-deciders from the field of psychology.” There are psychologists who happen also to be value-deciders (for whoever for some reason decided to accept their decisions).
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Arik:
To my delight, following your last message I hope I have found the misunderstanding between us. Perhaps I was unclear. Let me clarify that I am not insisting on handing a “value decision” to the expert. On the contrary. I claim that according to your model those bleary-eyed dwarfs are value-deciders and not experts. Therefore they cannot commit the expertise fallacy, simply because they are not experts. Their title or the recognition they receive only allows their opinion to be heard (similar to rabbis..). In other words, Yoram Yuval is telling newspaper readers what value decision that profession of bleary-eyed dwarfs to which he belongs has reached. He is not claiming that one cannot decide otherwise. He is explaining what considerations moved his group from one direction to another. He probably also hopes that more people will make this value change. Therefore, contrary to what you wrote, he also did not commit the expertise fallacy.

As a side point I will note again that in my opinion one can propose a different model for decision-making—a model in which knowledge or experience plays a more important role than it has in your model.

Thank you for your patience in your responses.
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Rabbi:
What you are now claiming, essentially, is that although this is a value decision, and although such a decision is entrusted to a value-decider and not to a professional, Yuval is indeed speaking about a value decision of a value-decider, and not as a professional. In other words, you are claiming that there is no substantive dispute between you and me but only a dispute over how to understand Yuval’s words. I understood him as trying to make a claim in the name of science, whereas the truth (in your opinion) is that he is really making a value claim.

But I disagree in two respects: 1. Your remarks indicate that there is a substantive dispute between us and not only over understanding his words. But that is less important, and I will not enter here into close readings of the earlier messages. 2. You are mistaken in your understanding of Yuval’s words, as I will now explain.

Yuval opens his remarks by presenting the model of the relations between a rabbi and a professional. According to your view, why is this important at all for his argument? After all, on your own account he too is not coming to make a professional claim but only to propose an alternative value definition. He is not trying to say that the rabbi should listen to what the professional has to say, for the professional has no added value here beyond the position of any other group or person. So why is this model placed at the beginning of his remarks? Clearly, then, he does mean to claim that this is a professional opinion.
Beyond that, Yuval also nowhere states in his remarks that this is a value decision, but presents it as a scientific fact that we know today and did not know in the past. Rabbi Levinstein is presented in his remarks as someone who is mistaken and out of date with what psychiatry has updated itself on, and not as someone who disagrees with him on values. The same is exactly true regarding his remarks about a dead person who breathes. There too he presents it as though this is a fact we all know, but as I showed, we really do not know it (and neither does he). It is not a fact.
Moreover, psychiatry too did not change its position for scientific reasons, as he presents it, but for value-cultural reasons, as I argued. This is either a misunderstanding or a lack of honesty in Yuval’s remarks about that change. In my assessment, it seems that this is deliberate tendentiousness in order to strengthen his claim that the determination whether something is a deviation is scientific and not value-based.
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Arik:
Now I am no longer sure that we understand each other’s arguments at all. From reading some of your writings, I esteem you more than I esteem myself, so I place the blame on myself. In any case I will try one more time, with my meager powers, to explain my remarks and my difficulty.

My initial argument was that your model, in which all decisions are handed only to a value-decider, is not necessarily the proper model. Along the way we did not delve deeply into the arguments why it is not proper to let experts decide precisely by virtue of their expertise. I guess our point of dispute is the question whether knowledge (expertise) in a certain field constitutes an advantage in making a value decision. In my opinion the answer is yes, and in your opinion probably the answer is no (as you wrote in your Tzohar article near note 4). Therefore, in your view, a psychiatrist like Yoram Yuval has no advantage whatsoever over another value-decider. From this comes your criticism of him: that he created the impression that his value decisions are worth more than those of rabbis because of his expertise, which is not relevant at all. Unlike you, in my view a value-decider who also has specific knowledge and expertise may have an advantage in making the value decision (you can find a hint of this in note 16 of your Tzohar article). The more a person without expertise acquires expertise, experience, and knowledge, the better his value decisions in that subject will be. I assume that this approach is what led Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach to delve into understanding electricity in order to decide the laws of Shabbat. And the lack of knowledge led the Mishnah Berurah to refrain from addressing these matters.

I focused my main difficulty on presenting the argument that your model is not always the actual model, and that sometimes value decisions are handed to experts. In this context I presented several cases from Israeli law and from law around the world in order to establish my difficulty. Regarding this difficulty you claimed that in all these cases what is involved is delegation of authority from another value-decider. I find that claim hard to accept, probably because in the legal terminology to which I am accustomed it is not customary to see such a situation as delegation of authority but more as “shirking responsibility” (in recent years several comprehensive studies have been written on this subject dealing with accounting standards, standards institutes, and more).

Later you explained that in fact from the moment the expert received the power to decide, he received it in the hat of a value-decider and not in the hat of an expert. Therefore there cannot be an actual situation that contradicts your model. This approach indeed removes the contradiction I presented from the actual situation, but it forces your model to be a kind of tautology (as you yourself wrote). With respect to this I raised another difficulty. After all, your criticism of Yoram Yuval is that he committed the “expertise fallacy.” But if every decision is always made in the hat of a “value-decider,” then Yoram Yuval cannot commit the expertise fallacy, because his decision will necessarily be value-based (even if he does not know or understand that).

You interpreted my remarks as though we had a disagreement about the interpretation of Yoram Yuval’s words. But that is not so. I truly do not know what he intended—whether to argue that in light of his expertise his value decision is the correct one, or perhaps merely to describe the process psychiatry went through and hope that such a process will happen among certain rabbis as well. My final claim is that, logically speaking, Yoram Yuval’s article does not commit the expertise fallacy. At most, you may fear that the average reader will mistakenly think that in light of Yoram Yuval’s broad knowledge one should adopt his value decisions. But on your view, a value decision is unrelated to expertise.
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Rabbi:
Many thanks for the compliments.

As you yourself noted, I too remarked that a professional may have intuitions that can give him added value. Still, that does not make them a professional opinion but at most a value intuition. Any layperson is entitled not to accept this, and that is completely legitimate, unlike a professional opinion. And certainly such an intuition should not be based on the model of a professional versus a rabbi, as Yuval wrote.

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s resorting to knowledge about electricity is not connected to the matter at all. Obviously one has to know what electricity is in order to determine something about it. Likewise one has to know what homosexuality is in order to express an opinion about it. If Yuval had only provided new professional information, fine (though the relevant information is familiar and well known). But he did not do that; rather, he expressed a value opinion in professional garb.

My claim about delegation of authority has nothing at all to do with what was or was not in the consciousness of the legislator who did it. I determine that conceptually he did in fact delegate authority, whether he did so to shirk responsibility or out of laziness or because he fell asleep or simply for convenience (which I too mentioned there in the article, and they are legitimate). Conceptually, what we have here is a value decision, and it is a tautology that this is entrusted not to the professional but to a value-decider. In any case, it is clear that for our purposes Rabbi Levinstein did not shirk responsibility and certainly did not ask Yuval to replace him in determining who is deviant (do you think that in his article Yuval simply intended to ask him to shirk responsibility?). So this too has nothing to do with us.

I repeat that if one agrees that this is a tautology, the dispute can only be over my premise that determining what counts as deviation is a value determination and not a professional one. If so, we have returned to the earlier points.

My concern was not that the reader would mistakenly fall into the expertise fallacy. What I claimed was that Yuval intended to cause him to fall into the expertise fallacy (and also fell into it himself). I proved this from his own words.

But it seems to me that we are indeed repeating ourselves. As I understand it, the positions are clear, and I suggest ending it here.

Before Me:
As in many other responses, here too the respected writer goes on at length with semantic and other “philosophizing” about definitions and the boundaries of definitions, while almost completely ignoring the two main messages that emerged in Yuval’s article:
A) “Homosexual sexual orientation and male homosexual intercourse are two very different things.” (To justify this claim Yuval elaborated on the definition of “deviation,” mainly in response to Rabbi Levinstein’s expression—but that is really not the main point!)
B) “A homosexual sexual orientation is not evidence of bad character, nor is it a free and deviant choice. It is a fate dictated, at least in part, by our biology—‘who made me according to His will,’ in the deepest sense of this difficult blessing.”

From claim A it follows that even a halakhic decisor can distinguish (theoretically, of course…) between the Torah’s prohibition of male homosexual intercourse, which is a human *abomination*, and modern h. which is human *love*, albeit for the same sex.
From claim B it follows that modern h. *is not entirely a matter of choice*, and in some cases it is clear that it is ‘forced’ on the person, and therefore the halakhic decisor must explain how it can be that the Torah prohibited it absolutely—or accept claim A, that the Torah indeed did not prohibit it.

I would now be glad if the respected writer would address these two claims, which are the heart of the article.

P.S.
To reinforce claim A one can add the clear context in which the prohibition was written in the Torah: adjacent to the prohibition of passing children to Molech and the prohibition of intercourse with an animal. In addition, one must take into account the cultural background to the phenomenon of male homosexual intercourse, which is stated explicitly in the Torah twice: in the episode of Sodom (which, incidentally, gave the act its name in Western culture, hence the negative connotations that turned it into a deviation!), and in the episode of the concubine in Gibeah—in both cases it is clear as the sun that this is *not* homosexual love, but abomination/rape carried out by men who were ‘straight’ in every respect, as a means of violence against strangers—a phenomenon that exists to this day in prisons and elsewhere.
(See at length here: http://ivri.org.il/2015/09/homo-religiosus)
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Rabbi:
Hello Avi.
I am glad that after the pessimistic preface you decided in your goodness nevertheless to give me a chance to explain. I hope you will at least read this explanation, because it is glaringly obvious that you did not read my post.

First, the two claims you mentioned are trivial, and there is hardly anyone who does not know them. For this one really does not need expertise in psychiatry, nor to write learned articles. Every rabbi certainly knows that love for someone of the same sex is not forbidden, and for that one needs even less Yuval’s dubious halakhic expertise (even with your learned elucidations added).
Second, I addressed these two claims explicitly and showed why they are not relevant to the discussion. Reading and reading comprehension are conditions for a discussion like this. So here, as a special gesture, I will pull out for your sake from among the clouds of my semantic pilpul a few of the relevant responses (they appear in several places in my remarks and not only in one place, but the clouds apparently interfere with seeing).
The first response appears already in the second sentence (even before you got tired of reading):

I too do not see homosexuality (certainly not the inclination, but even if it is realized in practice) as a moral problem but as a halakhic one.

And here is another passage that addresses both points in the same sentence:

Everyone knows that there is a difference between an inclination and its realization. Everyone knows that only the act is forbidden and not the inclination, whether it can be changed or not.

I will not continue, because there are other places where I address these two claims. In fact, almost all my remarks are nothing but an address to these claims.

As for your interpretive claim that there is no place to prohibit an action that is not chosen: in the example of kleptomania you can see that a prohibition is not necessarily connected to the question of choice (theft is forbidden even if there are people who are compelled to steal). Perhaps if we were speaking of an act that is not a matter of choice for any person in the world, there would be room to make your claim (for example, a prohibition on weighing over 10 kg or on breathing). But even Yuval did not make that false claim (he only hinted at it). Why is it false? First, because even regarding the inclination this is still an open question (whether it can be changed, whether it is always innate, whether it always has an organic source and only an organic source). Second, the act (as opposed to the inclination) is certainly not forced on anyone in the world (even if it is of course difficult to overcome). It is also very difficult not to speak slander, and yet there is still a halakhic prohibition against it.

Regarding the term “abomination,” see the discussion after column 15 (it will also be good practice for you in reading and comprehension). But it is not connected to our discussion.

In conclusion, it is hard for me to imagine anyone who could manage, in so short a passage, to pack in more errors and misunderstandings than you did. Bravo.
So I will add only two recommendations of my own: A. It is recommended to read things before passing judgment on them. B. It is recommended to put a bit more effort into definitions (= semantic pilpul) and argument construction when making a claim.

So much for my semantic pilpul for the moment.
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Avi:
The problem with your post is that it ostensibly opens by agreeing with Yuval’s remarks, and only notes a few mistakes (“Yoram Yuval’s conclusions are quite close to my own positions, but…”).
But later it turns out that you retract those supposed agreements and try to show that the article’s conclusions are baseless because of those very mistakes:
A) At the beginning you claim that h. is not a moral problem but a halakhic one—but later you engage at length in polemics over the question of authority for value-moral decisions and argue again (and again) that a psychiatrist has no such authority—so wait, is h. a value-moral problem or not?!
B) You claim that “everyone knows there is a difference between an inclination and its realization. Everyone knows that only the act is forbidden and not the inclination”—but you argue with Yuval, who is referring to Rabbi Levinstein’s words, who—what can be done—apparently does not agree with you, like many, many others who see homosexuals as “deviants,” whether they realize their inclination or not.
C) You claim that ostensibly there should be no difference between h. and kleptomania, and yet there is one, and from this it follows that the problem with h. is value-moral—and once again you contradict yourself.

Bottom line: if you really and truly agree with Yuval, what is the point of this convoluted post? For as I showed, you attribute assumptions to Yuval and put them in his mouth—one assumption contradicted by your own words, and a second assumption contradicted by the reality Yuval was addressing! Just write (if you must) that h. is a purely halakhic problem, like eating fish with meat, and is a matter for rabbis alone—so long, and thanks for all the fish!
And if you are trying to pay lip service to the facts Yuval presents, while trying to convey that in fact the whole article is baseless because of “basic and serious” errors—then you did not seriously address his two main claims, from which it follows that the rabbinic attitude (floor B-C) is based on a misunderstanding of floor A.

P.S.
Regarding the question of “chosen action”—that is the main question, and as you know very well from “The Science of Freedom,” the status of free will itself is the heart of the problem, all the more so some particular inclination. The scientific finding at present (floor A!…) clearly leans toward the assumption that *there is no* free will. Now go build floors B and C…
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Rabbi:
Hello Avi.
I am quite frustrated by messages like yours, because you set determinations against one another and loudly declare that they contradict each other, but as anyone can see (quite easily), they simply do not. It is like saying: on the one hand you said the sky is blue, and on the other hand you write that elephants have four legs. What am I supposed to do with such declarations? It is hard for me to give a basic lesson here in logic and reading comprehension, but I will try briefly.

First, read the positions of Yuval as I formulated them in the opening, with which I agree (that this is a halakhic problem and not a moral one, and that people relate to it improperly), and tell me whether in the bottom line of my remarks anything in them is contradicted. In brief, I agree that this is not a moral offense, and I disagree that the authority to determine this belongs to psychiatry.
I will now move to the “contradictions” you found in my remarks.
A) My word stands. I just did not understand what the contradiction in my remarks is. H. is not a moral problem but a halakhic one—but the authority to determine this is not entrusted to the psychiatrist. I agree with his claim but do not see it as a result of his professional authority. It seems to me this is not very complicated.
B) Indeed, I say that “everyone knows there is a difference between an inclination and its realization. Everyone knows that only the act is forbidden and not the inclination”—and indeed I argue with Yuval, who is referring to Rabbi Levinstein’s words. What is the contradiction? Rabbi Levinstein does not hold like I do that this is a halakhic problem and not a moral one, and sees h. people as deviants (let us assume even that this is whether they realize it or not—I do not recall whether he said so). But he too surely understands very well that there is a difference between inclination and realization at the halakhic and moral levels. This too is not really complicated.
C) I claim that ostensibly there should be no difference between h. and kleptomania (according to Yuval’s conception, which hangs the judgment on scientific facts and the possibility of choice), and yet there is one, and from this it follows that there is a contradiction in his position. And really what is more correct is that the problem with kleptomania is value-moral, whereas with h. there is no such problem, and therefore he does not see it as a deviation. Where is the contradiction? This is no longer a question of complexity but simply nonsense.
I explained what I agree with and what not. One simply has to read and employ very elementary logical tools. This “convoluted” post came to say that the question whether this is a moral problem or not is not entrusted to professionals and is unrelated to scientific facts. That is all. Not really complicated, and it seems to me not very convoluted either.
Regarding the P.S.: the status of free will is indeed an important part of the discussion, but Yuval did not raise it here. In my opinion, in a deterministic picture there is no room to talk at all about deviations in the accepted sense. And indeed I know very well from “The Science of Freedom” that the scientific finding at present (floor A!…) does not have the slightest connection or scrap of knowledge regarding the question whether there is or is not free will. So now I am indeed going and building floors B and C.
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Yeshayahu Hollander:
Greetings and blessings,
I accept the remark about “semantic philosophizing” gladly. For everything in Professor Yoram Yuval’s article that justified the headline “They Are Not Deviants” was based on “semantic philosophizing.” When the public speaks about deviants, it certainly does not mean Professor Yuval’s definition, but something much closer to what I wrote—and in that sense, in that definition, yes, they are deviants. Whoever has an opposite tendency is deviant. He may perhaps be righteous and not engage in male homosexual intercourse, and so I hope, and that is how I related to all those with opposite tendencies whom I had contact with—but in non-“professional” Hebrew, unrestricted by political correctness, they בהחלט are “deviants.”

I enjoyed reading Professor Yuval’s article, because it took me back to the religious high school where I studied—Municipal B in Tel Aviv. We studied Ahad Ha’am. In those days, in the religious stream, Ahad Ha’am was not studied, because he was a “heretic,” “outside the pale.” But we studied him, and we studied how to read articles critically: how, by what means, the writer tries to “put one over on us.” One can say that Professor Yuval’s article used some classic means.
One prominent means—defining the word “deviant” as suits him.
Another example: the definition of HOMOPHOBIA he uses. Perhaps this definition is accepted in psychiatry, but it is not the operative definition in public discourse. The public definition is: anyone who does not accept every argument—however absurd—of the leaders of the homosexual campaign is attacked as “homophobic,” as suffering from homophobia. Let us treat the word PHOBIA scientifically. Here is Mayo Clinic’s definition:
A phobia is an overwhelming and unreasonable fear of an object or situation that poses little real danger but provokes anxiety and avoidance.
In light of the articles whose links I provided, we are under attack intended to change society for the worse, and there is no unreasonable or reality-detached fear here.
Or that the fear concerns something that poses no real danger: after all, we see how the views of so many in the public, including the religious public, have been influenced, and political correctness almost prevents one from using the word “deviant.”

Another device, [which preceded the definitions]: “setting up a straw man.” He wrote against “extreme Haredi rabbis” and set them up as a straw man he then attacked, and of course no one reading Makor Rishon is suspected of agreeing with those “rabbis” he invented for the sake of writing the article, so that we innocent readers would be on his side and against those “rabbis.”

Another device: appeal to authority, to a “higher” authority. Professor Yuval’s argument in the name of science is again a way of influencing. I expect a person who presents himself as an expert—I assume he really is an expert—that if he writes about science, he should write about current science, not questionable science from two decades ago.

If we look at history, we see that the phenomenon of homosexuality is apparently a sign of “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked.” Homosexuality in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Britain at the end of the 19th century—these began after society had achieved its goals, sat securely, and could busy itself with pleasures—hedonism, bodily pleasures. The West today is in this state.
We are apparently at the end of Western, liberal culture. Europe is already in a long process of demographic suicide of society, for the birthrate in Europe is below the minimum required to sustain a society, and enlightened Europe has lost the will to exist. It is still possible that the “right” in Europe will yet wage a war against the Muslim invasion, and it is possible that this war will be soaked in blood, but without such a war—a CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS—Europe is lost.
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Avi:
Okay, bottom line, the post does not say very much, beyond a determination that can be summarized like this: only rabbis can determine a halakhic position, and only rabbis can determine a value-moral position. Well then…
Regarding Hollander’s responses (for which perhaps the post was written)—a few points for thought:
A) The concept “deviation” is correct, just as the concept “Negro” is correct. The question is what its connotations are. Clearly Yuval does not think for a moment that Rabbi Levinstein, Hollander and company think that “deviant” is what psychiatry defines it as (just as I do not think that a policeman who insults an Ethiopian with the term ‘Negro’ is thinking exactly about the Septuagint’s translation of the word ‘Cush’…)—but Yuval is trying to *change* the discourse, and that is his right, just as Rabbi Abraham tries to redefine all of Judaism according to his conception, and that is perfectly fine.
B) H. has existed from time immemorial, in every culture, including among the Jewish people. Not only that, but there are cultures that are not hedonistic-sinful (Hollander and co.’s wishful thinking is to force all h. into the ‘bed of Sodom’ of sinful hedonism, etc.), and yet h. exists in them. Thus in several African cultures:
https://books.google.co.il/books?id=ZjbESL6YWU0C
And even more strikingly in Nicaragua—where declared h. exists without all the ‘noise and fanfare’ of the LGBTQ organizations known in the West:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8505536
And there is a great deal more information on the subject; just ‘come out of your astrology,’ search Google Books for example for Homosexuality anthropology, and you will discover anthropological studies that found—surprise, surprise!—that the phenomenon existed on enormous scales (relatively speaking) long before the outbreak of the LGBT movement.
C) The claim repeated ad nauseam is that h. is a human choice influenced by environmental pressure—but the real question is how h. can exist at all, when it runs contrary both to evolution, to the social “norm” for thousands of years, and to the human tendency to avoid social ostracism and mental distress as much as possible. The average homosexual pays an enormous price for his “choice” (yes, even nowadays!), and still h. exists everywhere—are homosexuals not only deviants but also crazy?! Or perhaps there is an inbuilt human mutation here, characterizing about 3%-5% of the human species, which the Creator of the world (according to the usual religious understanding) apparently somehow ‘missed’ in the planning?
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Rabbi:
Not so. I will try to muster the remnants of my strength and help you again (to fulfill what is written: one who reviews his chapter one hundred thousand times is not comparable to one who reviews it one hundred thousand and one).
Bottom line, the post says that a psychiatrist has no authority to determine what counts as deviation. That is all that is written here. I did not say a word about who does have such authority, if only because in my opinion there is no place for authorities in this area. Any person or group may define things as they understand and according to their value conception. My claim is that “deviation” is a term that reflects values and not facts.
A) Yuval is trying to change the discourse by virtue of his professional authority. And that is simply neither correct nor legitimate. This is propaganda in the guise of a professional opinion.
B) As for Hollander’s remarks, let him answer. I will only note that the proof you brought is not a proof. The question is how the phenomenon broke out in our culture, not in Nicaragua. Did propaganda play a part in this or not? But about that, let the two of you argue among yourselves.
C) Again, things addressed to Hollander, and he should respond to them. But I cannot refrain from noting that each time you truly outdo yourself.
1. Your argument here is truly foolish. If h. is a phenomenon that runs contrary to evolutionary considerations—then how indeed does it exist according to your view? How did a mutation arise contrary to the processes of evolution? For exactly the opposite is true: if it were a matter of free choice (assuming there is choice and assuming h. is the result of choice), then evolutionary questions would not necessarily be troubling. But on your view, that it is organic and genetic, this becomes utterly inexplicable. We have found a genetic phenomenon that runs head-on against the process of evolution. Surprise, surprise—someone must update Darwin and Dawkins. But if you choose to commit intellectual suicide (to raise arguments that shoot your own view in the foot) before all Israel—who am I to interfere with you?!
2. And as for a chosen action against social norms, what do you think of someone who decides to murder contrary to social norms and takes on the risk of ostracism and severe condemnation? Well, we have never seen a murderer in our midst. Ah, I remembered: actually the murderer too is organically compelled to do his deeds. So there too one must not condemn him, and it is not a deviation. QED.
3. And I have not yet spoken of the absurd argument against the conception that the Creator created the phenomenon. After all, if it is a matter of human choice, then God is not the one who created the phenomenon but those who chose it. So what is the claim here?
It seems to me that this whole thread should be bound and published as a feuilleton, or an anti-logical humorous sketch.
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Avi:
So that the discussion can move toward a conclusion, I will comment only on your reasoning that h. is more plausible on the assumption of free choice than on the assumption of evolution. Well, it is not. Evolution allows mutations (and your words “how did a mutation arise contrary to the processes of evolution?” are astonishingly puzzling), whereas free choice, in my opinion, much less so. The percentage of human suicides, for example (speaking of “intellectual suicide”…) is negligible—far, far less than h.—and the overwhelming majority can be explained simply, unlike h. As for murder, there is no question at all—the motive is clear and so is the personal gain—almost the opposite of h.
And regarding whether God created the phenomenon—I meant the following simple question: how can there exist even one person at all (and even Levinstein will admit that one exists) who is involuntarily attracted to men, if “God made man upright”?… And yes, the question also exists regarding other human phenomena, for those who hold that God indeed created the world in the ‘religious’ sense—but that really is an entirely different discussion.
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Rabbi:
I am certainly in favor of moving toward a conclusion.
I did not say that h. is more plausible on the assumption of choice; I only remarked that you dragged evolution in here as well (in addition to social pressure). If evolution is our subject, then indeed free choice is much more plausible than genetics.
Evolution does not allow mutations but is built on their existence (without them there would have been no evolution). But it selects from among them the mutations that are more suitable (adaptation).
What you meant to say is that evolution also includes genetic drift and dead ends, and that is perfectly clear. That is precisely what makes it an unfalsifiable theory, as I explained in my book. And exactly because of that there is no point in dragging it in here.
The number of suicides is low relative to h., but again this comparison has no meaning at all. The question is what pressure there is to create this phenomenon or that one. The absolute number has no significance in such a comparison.
Regarding the motive and personal gain in murder, I completely disagree with you. A significant portion of murders have no real gain alongside them (casual violence murders). And if silencing violence is a gain, then h. too has gain and motive once you are already h. In short, a meaningless comparison.
As for the question about God, there are so many tendencies in people to do moral or religious evil that h. is only one example, and not a particularly important one, among a thousand. And the answer to all of these is that God expects us to act according to His moral and religious directives despite our inclinations, out of our choice. If we had no inclinations either to good or to bad, our free will would have no meaning at all. We would do the good like a sheep, because that is its nature.
In conclusion, it seems to me that the matters are understood. Each of the readers will judge as he sees fit.

Yeshayahu Hollander:
More power to Rabbi Michi. I will add only a few points:

1) We—all of us, straights and those with opposite inclinations—have been and still are the target of a long, deliberate campaign to change our opinions. The method was formulated in 1987 and has been implemented with great success. Most of the public in the Western world changed its outlook in accordance with the propagandists’ plan.
The aim of the method was not, as the propaganda makes it appear, “equality,” “improving social status,” or anything similar. The aim was written down a few months earlier, in this article: “Gay Revolutionary” http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/swift1.html
Out of reverence for Hebrew, I did not want to translate the article. I will bring here only the opening paragraph:
“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.” This is the beginning of the definition of the goal. The method to achieve the goal was formulated, as stated, a few months after the goal was defined. Here is the link: “The Overhauling of Straight America” – http://www.defendthefamily.com/_docs/resources/8142838.pdf
I suggest that anyone who sees himself as an independent thinker read the plan and see whether he has been influenced by the mechanism described.
By the way, since it was and is abundantly clear that the method succeeded greatly, the method was studied in institutions that deal with social change, and the method was given a name: MOVING THE OVERTON WINDOW.

2) Professor Yoram Yuval’s article describes updated scientific knowledge—for yesterday, not for today. I do not know whether he does not know, or ignored, a very important study published by The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, one of the best and most prestigious institutions in the world for university scientific research including treatment centers.
The title of the article is SEXUALITY AND GENDER, link to the full publication – http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/number-50-fall-2016
But the article is over 140 pages long. A summary of the article can be found here: No Scientific Evidence That People Are Born Gay or Transgender, Johns Hopkins Researchers Say
BY SAMUEL SMITH , CP REPORTER
August 22, 2016|7:30 am
http://www.christianpost.com/news/no-scientific-evidence-that-people-are-born-gay-or-transgender-johns-hopkins-researchers-say-168263/pageall.html
Professor Yuval cited studies by Simon LeVay [SIMON LE VAY]. Summaries of his studies at that time were published in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, in May 1994, together with summaries of studies that contradicted LeVay’s claims. True, LeVay’s conclusion was that people are born with opposite inclinations, they are coerced, they simply are not “males” in the classical sense, and therefore one should relate to them as another type of human being.
What is interesting is that after a few years, once the public in America more or less stopped relating to homosexuals as worthy of ostracism and instead as entitled to compassion and understanding as the “other,” and once the policy of homosexual leadership was to say that homosexuality is not innate but merely a matter of lifestyle—ALTERNATIVE LIFE STYLE—he published an article in which he retracted the claim that the opposite inclination is innate. That is his right. And it is our right to think what we think about Professor LeVay’s reliability.
3. The change in the professionals’ perception—the psychiatrists’—regarding the phenomenon of homosexuals crystallized in practice after a change in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known in short as the DSM. The book is edited from time to time by the AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION. The book is put together by a committee of experts. In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the DSM. How did that happen? The story was written by a psychiatrist who supported the homosexual activists, named DR. RONALD BAYER, in his book
Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diagnosis. (1981)
In chapter four, “Diagnostic Politics: Homosexuality and the American Psychiatric Association,” he describes the politics—including stormy demonstrations, threats, etc.—that were exerted on the conference participants in order to get them to delete homosexuality from the book. In the end, a vote was held—not in the professional committee but in the plenary—and this illness was deleted.

Years later, this was written:
“The DSM appears to be more a political document than a scientific one. Each diagnostic criteria in the DSM is not based on medical science. No blood tests exist for the disorders in the DSM. It relies on judgments from practitioners who rely on the manual.” (source: http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20COI.PDF) – Lisa Cosgrove, PhD, Professor of Counselling and School Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
4. Professor Yuval succeeded in proving that according to his definitions, homosexuals are not deviants. But his definitions are not the people’s definitions. For us, a “deviant” is a person who has relations with members of his own sex, or with his relatives, such as a father with his daughter, a boy with his mother; in our language they are all deviants. Therefore, in our language—perhaps not in the language of the psychiatrists—and despite the efforts of homosexual leadership, still
almost all of us are glad and proud—
that we are not deviants.
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Rabbi:
Rabbi Yeshayahu, greetings.
Many thanks for the information. It is hard to respond to so much material. But the principle is clear.
Still, it seems to me that one has to be a bit careful of the “Elders of Zion” fallacy. That there is a brutal and hysterical propaganda campaign is clear. That many people (including professionals) fall victim to it is also clear. On the other hand, the question whether it was all planned in advance and orchestrated all along by a secret council of elders is another question, and let us leave it open for the time being. 🙂
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Yeshayahu Hollander:
Greetings, Rabbi Michael!
I do not know whether today there is or is not a guiding hand. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the situation has passed “critical mass,” and this evil beast now carries itself. But films and plays are still being made that throw homosexual relations in our faces day and night—for those who watch them. They are working on us. We need to be aware of this and defend ourselves.

‘Ayin’:
In your columns regarding homosexuality, you repeatedly say that in your view the prohibition on homosexuality is a religious prohibition (really beyond reason altogether..), since the act fits and fits with your moral conception (after all, we have here two conscious subjects engaging in sex willingly, so what of it?). Fine and good.

At the same time, in an earlier column of yours (http://www.mikyab.com/single-post/2016/05/29/%D7%92%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99-%D7%A2%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA), regarding an issue that according to my understanding is not far off, incest, you argued something somewhat different. There you wrote following Leibowitz (divine providence..):

“So much for why reductionism is dangerous. As stated, in my view it is also not correct. To the best of my fundamentalist understanding, the psychological damages are a result of the moral prohibition, not its causes.”
That is to say, incest is a moral prohibition and not a religious one, and it is a moral intuition that cannot be specified rationally because it is a postulate that cannot draw its meaning from anything but itself.

Assuming you have not changed your mind since then (after all, the response to Taub was written more than 16 years ago!), I would be grateful if you could explain why homosexuality and incest should be viewed differently, even though both may answer to the up-to-date moral imperative—“consensual sex.”
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Rabbi:
In recent years I have wondered whether those words of mine still stand. Simply speaking, there really is no moral prohibition in incest. Perhaps there is some dimension of “ugliness” or something “humanly flawed,” but not morality in its usual sense. I am not even sure of that. It may simply be an evolutionary instinct.

This is connected to the question whether there are moral values that do not concern another person. Usually we are speaking of ugliness or bad character traits, and not morality proper. For example, being arrogant. Is that immoral? Or engaging in pornography secretly and alone? Spending one’s whole life occupied with pointless but harmless nonsense? The feeling is that there is something “ugly” or “flawed” here, even though it does not necessarily harm anyone (or alternatively, if we neutralize the harms in various ways). Is that morality? Is it a prohibition that is not moral? Or perhaps there is no problem in it?

In the end, I am on the verge of repentance on this matter, and only the leaven in the dough is holding me back. 🙂
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‘Ayin’:
If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that what follows from your words is not that you are “on the verge of repentance on this matter,” but rather the opposite.

That is to say, if we agree that ‘bad character traits’ do indeed exist (laziness, pride, incest), and they are not the product of subjective preferences (like a favorite music genre or a preferred food) but genuine moral intuitions (even if of a second order, since in the end they do not harm another person—still, we do in fact experience these acts as negative, precisely, and not merely as “not preferred” by us..), then we will have to say that this is indeed a moral wrong. Again, even if this behavior does not justify coercion and the use of violence against it (since there is no harm to another, according to those who say that is the requirement), it is still a value postulate in every sense, even though it requires greater moral and conceptual sensitivity.

Please share your view. And whether I do not see reality eye to eye with you.
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Rabbi:
I agree with everything you wrote, except that all of this I already noted and described as thoughts that arise in me from time to time. My inclination is to think that nevertheless there is no moral flaw in any of this, though as I wrote, I too have some intuitions indicating that there is still some flaw of personality here (not really moral). But when the “repentance” process I’m speaking of is complete, it may be that these intuitions too will disappear. Bottom line, I’m still deliberating about it.

Elad:
I think Professor Yuval did indeed “shed light” on a very important factual point (as I understand it).
Very often in discussions the argument appears that in another few years pedophiles and people who sleep with animals will also be the norm.
Maybe yes and maybe no.
But the essence of the professor’s words, as he himself presented them, is the ability to love a person (that is a factual claim). Psychiatry’s position was not brought specifically as a compelled value position, but as floor B or C resting on floor A, since there a new element did appear. And I think it can indeed illuminate the discussion.
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Rabbi:
Hello Elad.
That is not what he argued. He came to define deviation at the professional level. If you learned something incidentally, excellent. I too learned various things I did not know (such as the order of emergence from the womb), but that is not relevant to his discussion.
Beyond that, tomorrow morning there will be a new Freud who defines deviation differently (not love for a whole person but something else), and then pedophilia too will become permitted. There is no guarantee here; it is all a matter of fashions. As I already wrote, these definitions are based on values and not on professional foundations.
By the way, I personally really do think it is only a matter of time until all of this is permitted. Pedophilia will probably be last; before it, incest (living with one’s sister) and bestiality. By the way, for me this is not an argument, but since you commented I responded.

Yud:
I thought this might interest you

https://musaf-shabbat.com/2016/09/01/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%90%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%A1%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%99%D7%98%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%99%D7%95%D7%90%D7%91-%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A7
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Rabbi:
Thank you for this. It is indeed very interesting. I also enjoyed the previous one:
https://musaf-shabbat.com/2016/08/17/%D7%94%D7%93%D7%A8%D7%9A-%D7%A8%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%94-%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%98%D7%95%D7%91%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%99%D7%95%D7%90%D7%91-%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A7/#more-23303
To tell the truth, it seems to me that both articles rest on one factual point. If it is correct, everything else is self-evident and called for. But regarding it, I am truly not convinced that it is correct. This point is the factual claim that most human beings are on the spectrum and can live one way or the other (that is, there is almost no distinct sexual nature and the division is not dichotomous). Subjectively, I am not impressed that this is so, but of course I do not understand this area and have not investigated it. In any case, this is a factual claim that stands at the base of the discussion, and therefore it requires serious grounding. To my taste, general and non-quantitative data about esoteric societies (not sufficiently known to me or to readers generally) is not enough.
What is essentially being claimed there is that a person who truly feels himself to be gay really could have undergone “conversion therapy” successfully and without harm, contrary to what is accepted today. That is the implication of that factual assumption. True, this is only theoretically so, for it is also said that his very feeling—which has been embedded in him because of the cultural change (and perhaps also because of the prohibition and the taboo)—prevents the success of the treatment (it seems to me this was brought in the name of Tuvia Peri, or perhaps in the talkbacks). But by this the theory becomes something unfalsifiable. In essence, this is more an alternative proposal (admittedly an interesting one) than a grounded claim.
In conclusion, both articles depend on this point, and therefore it is so important to the discussion. And precisely because of this it is very important to establish it properly. For now I am far from convinced that it is correct (though of course I have not examined it at all and I am far from a good acquaintance with the situation and the phenomenon).
One more remark. In the culture now developing, in which there is a calm and relaxed attitude toward homosexuality, according to the articles’ approach one would expect the situation to reverse. Now conversion treatments (if they were done there for some reason, though in such a society a person has no reason to undergo such treatment) should indeed succeed. Moreover, in such a society one would hardly expect there to be actual gays at all; rather, everyone would be on the spectrum (bi). It seems to me that this is not really happening so far.
More power to you, and thank you,
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Yud:
Thank you, Rabbi Michi,
The claim that all human beings are on the spectrum is, in my opinion, a basic assumption about which there is no disagreement once one leaves the political and ideological arena and enters the arena of statistics, behavior, inclinations, etc. If you enter the many English Wikipedia pages devoted to sexual orientation and gender identity, you can find much material—and throughout it there is a clear determination that attraction to one’s own sex is very common and is not connected specifically to h. This includes the Kinsey survey and all the other familiar materials. Beyond that, in my eyes, the fact that in very many societies—in fact every society in which there was no prohibition—all the men (whom today we would define as ‘hetero,’ since they had partnerships and sexuality with women) were accustomed to have sexual relations also with men, is a fact stronger than anything else. Were they all homosexuals there? Obviously not. This was the majority, the mainstream; and it turns out that sexual attraction to our own sex is natural and widespread. I am unable to find any other explanation—and indeed, I’d be interested to hear what you propose. We are not speaking of esoteric societies, but of all the societies that did not bear a biblical tradition. כדאי you should take a look at Greenberg’s book that was mentioned, or at Prager’s article.
Regarding ‘conversion’—I wrote nothing about the success of treatment in a cultural atmosphere (perhaps someone else brought something like that in the talkbacks). I will say only one thing that in my view is important: one therapist, a psychologist, sent me a description of a treatment he conducted with a young man who came to him defining himself as completely gay: not attracted to women at all and very attracted to men. A respectable religious family, with parents willing to pay any fortune to “change” him. The therapist told them that he does not “change” people, but he can help the young man if he wants. I waited to read about some dramatic and strange treatment—and what I found inside was classic psychological treatment: a bit of analysis of the father figure and so on, psychoanalysis, a bit of behavioral guidance, and after a year and a half or two the young man was already what we call normative. A simple, classic treatment, which unfortunately is denied to anyone who the moment he finds such an inclination in himself defines himself as ‘gay,’ and heaven forbid one must not touch it. By the way, this is not what is called ‘conversion therapy,’ which is a controversial and heavy-handed technique. In this case, and in my opinion in a long series of cases we do not hear about, there is no need at all for ‘conversion therapies,’ because no one needs to be ‘converted’; one only has to put the soul in order.
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Rabbi:
From what I see around me, the matter is quite clear-cut (true, this is in our culture, the biblical one). There is of course a period of formation of sexual identity/inclination in adolescence; that is familiar and nobody disputes it. But I am under the impression that after one passes through that, the phenomenon of blurred inclination almost does not exist.
But even so, even if you are right, the question is what to do in our given culture (which is indeed biblical) and in the current situation. At the moment it seems that the definitions are indeed dichotomous, and I doubt whether there is a significant number of people after adolescence who experiment in both directions. At least among us it seems to me that people are well defined. Once there is someone who is clearly defined, it is hard for me to see him standing up under this prohibition. Therefore the claims about the difficulties society creates will remain as they are. Quite apart from identity and so on, it is hard to ask a society to place taboo prohibitions on a phenomenon that characterizes a non-negligible percentage of its members.
Beyond that, obviously in the background there is a value dispute, religious-secular (I know that from your perspective even that is not dichotomous). So long as we are speaking about the religious society, I understand your claim. But we live among a secular society (if we set aside the nuances), which does not see this as something bad. Do you want to persuade them that it is bad? Why really is it bad? Even if they will not accept sexual inclination as an essential component of identity, still you would agree that this is at least a harsh demand that does not seem reasonable. It is not like demanding that a person restrain his sexual urges. Here this is not restraint but suppression. It is a terrible task, and it is hard for me to see a society accepting it if it does not share the halakhic commitment. And even if there is psychological treatment that succeeds in helping, as you described, and even if it always helps (which I greatly doubt, but that is part of my generally reserved attitude toward psychology), why would a person who does not see this as a value problem go for it?
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Yud:
Why would a person who has no value problem want to distance himself from a homosexual inclination? Because these are poor lives for several reasons, first and foremost mental health. See the report in the new issue of New Atlantis

Tzadi:
Rabbi Michael, greetings and blessings.
Not that someone like you needs support from me, but even so I would like to thank you for the response you wrote to Yoram Yuval that was published in Makor Rishon.

I admit that his article confused me a bit intellectually, and your response put things back in order for me…

More power to you, and keep writing…
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Rabbi:
Thank you, Tzadi. So perhaps I returned to you a little of what I owe you. 🙂 If it interests you, see a more detailed discussion in columns 25–26 on my site, and in the talkbacks that follow them. There Yuval responds to me personally and I respond to him again. It sharpens the flaws in his arguments even more.

Reut:
Rabbi Michi, greetings and blessings,
The article was fascinating and clear and put my thoughts in order in principle—not only in this specific discussion but generally. Thank you very much!
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Rabbi:
Many thanks. Gladly.