Q&A: Same-Sex Love in Our Time
Same-Sex Love in Our Time
Question
Hello. From studying the biblical texts, it seems clear that a man’s love for a man is true love, whereas a man’s love for a woman is not. In Greek culture, masculine honor meant being with a man, and someone who was not was considered of lower status in that respect. The stigmas and the label this acquired in our culture turned it into a tragic situation. I am against the Pride Parade for exactly those reasons; what they do there only reinforces the stigmas and creates backlash. I see those of our times as exactly like the whole culture of screens and emptiness, a kind of mutation that developed, something unprecedented, and this comes at the expense of those normal people whom life led to this inclination. My questions are: in your opinion, what are the reasons that being like this nowadays is tragic? Do you think their parade is justified, with everything they do there? And will there ever be a halakhic change on this issue?
Answer
If you mean religious homosexuals, then it is indeed tragic. The cause of this is of course Jewish law. In the secular public, we are dealing with taboos whose source is apparently religious. The parade is a protest against discriminatory treatment that does indeed exist. The protest is very justified; the form the protest takes does not appeal to me. I don’t know whether there will be a halakhic change on this matter in the future. I assume that when there is a halakhic authority that governs a state or society, and the responsibility rests on it, the attitude toward them will change (as with many other things).
Discussion on Answer
I did not understand the question. When there is, if there is, an authority that has responsibility for what happens in the state.
What I am writing is that psychologically, the flaws immediately jump to mind as to why being gay nowadays is tragic. If you go back along the timeline to a different culture, being gay is masculine, and not being so detracts from someone’s masculinity. Culture is a social idea, and human beings are the same human beings physiologically. Isn’t it a shame that people do not work on the root of the problems because of which people with this inclination commit suicide, and it has become tragic for them?
Back then it was even more tragic. The consecrated boys were exploited by psychopathic adults.
Not necessarily. I mean more generally that in today’s culture this is tragic, and it has destructive consequences that you can see in the strange behaviors and provocations. In short, it is completely different from something that confers masculine honor. As for religion, apparently David was like that, and there was a homosexual cult in the Temple. But the point is that once the verses that apparently were added forbidding this came in, that is where the problem began. I understand that the protest is justified. But I do not accept at all how this has developed in our time, because that is no small part of the problem of the stigmas that make it tragic. What religious authority are you talking about? Which one of them?