Q&A: LGBT
LGBT
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I understand from the Rabbi’s words that morality is determined by intuition. The question is whether the fact that many people in the world see homosexual relations as something wrong is evidence that it is indeed wrong, and the Torah, which calls it an abomination, plainly agrees with that. After all, people also feel that relations with one’s mother are wrong even without an explanation, and likewise relations with an animal—people do not have an explanation for what is wrong with that, and perhaps no explanation is needed, just as there is no explanation for why murder is wrong.
Answer
Indeed, no explanation is needed. Moreover, any explanation will itself be based on intuitive feelings. Still, that does not mean it is not worthwhile to examine our feelings from time to time, and to check whether their source is perhaps a social taboo or some external pressure rather than a genuine insight.
Discussion on Answer
You would not expect a Jew to raise considerations of what the majority think as an indication of truth..
Eran, that is only a technical question. We have no criterion for determining, and perhaps also not for deciding, such a dispute. But that does not mean a person cannot understand for himself when it is intuition and when it is not.
What you call intuition, someone else will call a social construct. And that can go on forever. (With murder, one can admittedly say that even the intuition of the one who denies it is really like that, and he is just being stubborn. But in matters of forbidden sexual relations and the like, with a bit of work it is possible to blur any intuition, as for example with the issue of polygamy nowadays.)