Q&A: Homosexuality and Jewish Law
Homosexuality and Jewish Law
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I’m attaching an article here; I’d be glad to hear your opinion:
https://m.ynet.co.il/Articles/5551005
Answer
There’s no great novelty here. The wording isn’t always correct, such as “they should be allowed to live as a couple” and “their rabbinic prohibitions should be permitted.” No one can permit a prohibition. He can remain silent and let them decide for themselves. But broadly speaking, it is of course correct.
Discussion on Answer
What they describe. These processes are indeed happening.
When you think about it, in the Torah itself there is an example of a person who is fully fit in every respect, yet the Torah does not allow him to have a sexual partnership—and he has to live with that. The obvious reference is to one with crushed testicles or a severed organ, who is forbidden to enter the congregation of the Lord (apparently because a relationship without procreation is a waste, from the woman’s standpoint, when she could have more offspring if she married someone else). In that sense he is worse off than a homosexual, because the latter at least is permitted to marry a woman. The Torah leaves him in his loneliness. And the homosexual should supposedly learn from him by an a fortiori argument and say, from the Torah’s point of view, “It is enough for me that I can realize some sort of sexuality.” Presumably, before the homosexual movement, many such people lived in relationships with women, and it was not as terrible as it is perceived and experienced today.
On the other hand, based on what I argued in parentheses, one could suggest that the case of the man with the severed organ cannot “teach” the homosexual to accept the decree, because the homosexual is less severe, not more severe. Since a woman is forbidden to marry two men, a severed organ damages the woman’s reproductive potential, and that is why the Torah was so stringent with him. The homosexual is different: he damages nothing, because he is married to a man and has not “wasted” anyone’s fertility—both because either he or his male partner can impregnate several women, and because even if they do not marry women at all, there is no fertility loss here, since one man can impregnate several women and in the end the balance is not harmed. The percentage of homosexuals does not reduce fertility rates in a society where several women may in any case be married to one man. If so, that homosexual who did not marry has deprived no one of anything, and that would seemingly be reason to be lenient with him.
Well, these are gut-level speculations, but the example from the man with the severed organ still stands. As an aside, I’ll note that it may be that the Torah’s great stringency toward the woman in the law of “then you shall cut off her hand” is not because she breached the taboo of modesty, but because it establishes the principle of fertility as something sacred among the Jewish people. Under no circumstances may a man’s reproductive ability be endangered, since that would leave him sterile and unable to enter the congregation of the Lord. That is probably far more severe than the loss of a hand. These are hard things to absorb—but in any case this law is very difficult. Another possibility is that the Torah is saying that even though there might have been room to be lenient with a woman who grabbed the genitals, because that was her only weapon, nevertheless it is stringent with her. The novelty is that even a woman is punished severely. Fair enough: a man too who grabbed a woman’s genitals would likewise be punished, and indeed we find this in the laws of the ancient Near East—a reciprocity in this punishment. According to that, the reason for the punishment really is the breaching of the boundaries of modesty—but it is not chauvinistic.
See contrary examples in the Ynet article brought here at the beginning.
I don’t know the feelings, inclinations, and desires of someone with crushed testicles, so it’s hard for me to understand what is going on there.
I didn’t understand—what is of course correct?