Jewish Leaders: Same-sex Marriage Ban Represents Hatred, Injustice and Persecution

Madison.com ^ | March 22, 2006 | Misc. WI Jewish "Leaders"

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Dear Editor: As leaders of the Jewish community in Madison, including its three synagogues, the Madison Jewish Community Council, and Hillel Foundation at the University of Wisconsin, we express our outrage and deep disillusionment at the Wisconsin Legislature's passage of a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships.

Our Jewish values impel us to create a society that is democratic, pluralistic and just. This amendment, however, does just the opposite and promotes hatred. As religious people, we cannot be silent. The amendment denies equal rights to a historically persecuted group and relegates them to second-class status. Under federal law, over 1,000 rights, responsibilities and privileges accrue to married couples and their families. The history of the Jewish people compels us to vigorously oppose any attempt to limit the rights of a minority, and this amendment clearly is intended to do just that.

Moreover, with the amendment's preventing the state from recognizing "substantially similar" relationships like civil unions and domestic partnerships, same-sex couples will be denied critical legal protections and rights they currently enjoy or might enjoy in the future from their employers. This will hurt real families who live in every part of our state.

Proponents inform us that it will be the courts that will decide what "substantially similar" means. Yet, it is those same proponents who claim that the purpose of the amendment is to stop "activist judges" from defining marriage. Either they are being hypocritical with respect to the role that they want or don't want the courts to play, or they are being untruthful. Perhaps they are being both.

Many, though not all, of us recognize the religious status of same-sex marriage. However, this amendment seeks to ban civil marriage for same-sex couples, which is an entirely different matter. It is not for the state to define for religions what is or is not permissible.

We stand firmly in support of the separation of religion and state, a cherished value that ensures religious liberty for the Jewish community and for people of all faiths and beliefs. Whatever else this amendment may be about, it is also about which religion or religious view shall be the law of our state. That is precisely what the Founders sought to avoid and what we in this state have avoided for 157 years.

Jewish tradition teaches us that every human being is created in the image of God. Each one of us is truly sacred and deserves to be treated with equal respect and dignity. We, therefore, must embrace our human diversity and demand equality for all.

As religious leaders committed to fostering values that strengthen the love and commitment between human beings, we urge citizens to vote no on the amendment, and we urge you to join with us in mobilizing other citizens to do the same.

Rabbi Jonathan Biatch, Temple Beth El; Rabbi Kenneth Katz, Beth Israel Center; Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, Congregation Shaarei Shamayim; Steven H. Morrison, Madison Jewish Community Council; Greg Steinberger, Hillel Foundation; Rabbi Andrea Steinberger, Hillel Foundation; Rabbi Renee Bauer, Congregation Mayim Rabim; Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

[Aliska]

It's always kind of fascinated me, but there are so many different opinions out there as to what happened to the tribes, that I try not to figure it out. DNA could one day shed some light on it, but that is fraught with dangers for the Jews and racial Jews who aren't Jews.

I'll read those passages in Judges when I can concentrate better. It's curious to me how many decrees by God seemed to come to pass, even thought wrought by men.

I'm just glad we had St. Paul, although others would argue the point. I don't get into it.

I sure hope I'm not descended from the tribe of Dan :-).

[Giant Conservative]

The very idea that human beings have individual rights not subject to the whims of a monarch, but subject to the laws of Yahweh, is directly from Moses.

Isn't that giving to *Moses* credit that rightfully belongs to Christ?

[Giant Conservative]

It's always kind of fascinated me, but there are so many different opinions out there as to what happened to the tribes...

They fought each other, and some survived, and some did not.

[Aliska]

They fought each other, and some survived, and some did not.

I always thought there were remnants of each tribe out there somewhere, just that they had lost their identity. You could be right. All but the one and evidently some Benjaminites got carried off into captivity where presumably they sired offspring. Many no doubt cast off their Jewish identity as they assimilated into other cultures and religions so that their descendants no longer knew their ethnic origins.

Nobody seems to know. Some think they know. The bible is silent on it, and I don't know the correct interpretation of Revelation and the sealing of the twelve tribes listed there which could be symbolic. Somehow I think it is literal but don't know the timeframe involved.

[saradippity]

Why not accept their position about their own religion?

/Because it seems that a little more or less of half of people who say they are Jews don't ascribe to their particular position. Maybe it is time that they get their act together, a lot hangs on what they do believe.

[PzLdr]

Altough I'm not Jewish, my understanding is that they don't write the word God out of respect. Since the thread was about Judaism, I merely tried to honor that tradition.

[Giant Conservative]

Because it seems that a little more or less of half of people who say they are Jews don't ascribe to their particular position.

Do you have any proof of that? Any poll of members of a major/large branch of Judaism in which even a clear majority says they are pro-life or opposed to homosexuality?

[chit*chat]

Read your Bible.

[saradippity]

I believe if you look for some Dennis Prager threads or Michael Medved or Dr. Laura threads you will find much back up for my statement.

Futhermore,I have read that at least one quarter of those who are Jewish are secular and do not identify with the religious Jews and hold positions on morals and values contrary to Orthodox Jews at the very least. I believe the percentage of secular Jews in Israel may even be greater than in the U.S.

It is extremely difficult to pin down numbers because there are so many variables.

I have pinged Alouette who is one of the experts on all things Jewish in Free Republic.She is very informed and gracious,and has never failed to respond to my specific requests for info. Alouette,can you help?

[Giant Conservative]

Here is a link to documentation emphasizing that socially liberal positions on abortion are in fact very common within Judaism.

Christians seem to have a hard time accepting that Judaism and socially liberal positions are not incongruent.

[goldstategop]

The Jewish view is that while abortion is not a crime its not a moral good either. So it tends fall somewhere between the extremes and accepts that a woman may need to obtain an abortion to save the life of the mother. But neither does it accept the secular liberal view of abortion on demand.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[Giant Conservative]

It isn't even in the ballpark of the Christian / socially conservative view that abortion is morally wrong and must be stopped.

The reason why it isn't in the same ballpark is that the pro-life position is in accordance with Christianity, but does not naturally follow from any belief system which ascribes divine inspiration to the Old Testament and not to the New Testament.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Isn't that giving to *Moses* credit that rightfully belongs to Christ?

Luke 16:31. “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Nave, Orville J., A.M., D.D., LL.D., chaplain in the Army of the United States. Nave's Topical Bible; A Digest of the Holy Scriptures. New York: Eaton & Mains, 1897.

Moses received the Law and gave it to man.

I am not aware that Yeshua ever violated the Mosaic Law or made any comment negating it in the Bible. It is quite clear the Son of Man, by those words attributed to Him in the Gospels, did not come to give the Law. He came to fulfill it, as it was his appointed service.

[Unlike my good friend GWB, my favorite philosopher was Moses. A philosopher is a human being. Speaking theologically, Yeshua was not a philosopher. He was Yahweh in human flesh.]

From another one of my favorite books:

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness
Chap. xlv. Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.

[10] Another relic of Gentilism is the worship of images, neither instituted by Moses in the Old, nor by Christ in the New Testament; nor yet brought in from the Gentiles; but left amongst them, after they had given their names to Christ. Before our Saviour preached, it was the general religion of the Gentiles to worship for gods those appearances that remain in the brain from the impression of external bodies upon the organs of their senses, which are commonly called ideas, idols, phantasms, conceits, as being representations of those external bodies which cause them, and have nothing in them of reality, no more than there is in the things that seem to stand before us in a dream. And this is the reason why St. Paul says, "We know that an idol is nothing": not that he thought that an image of metal, stone, or wood was nothing; but that the thing which they honored or feared in the image, and held for a god, was a mere figment, without place, habitation, motion, or existence, but in the motions of the brain. And the worship of these with divine honour is that which is in the Scripture called idolatry, and rebellion against God. For God being King of the Jews, and His lieutenant being first Moses, and afterward the high priest, if the people had been permitted to worship and pray to images (which are representations of their own fancies), they had had no further dependence on the true God, of whom there can be no similitude; nor on His prime ministers, Moses and the high priests; but every man had governed himself according to his own appetite, to the utter eversion of the Commonwealth, and their own destruction for want of union. And therefore the first law of God was: they should not take for gods, alienos deos, that is, the gods of other nations, but that only true God, who vouchsafed to commune with Moses, and by him to give them laws and directions for their peace, and for their salvation from their enemies...

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.
Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

[13] ...For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in [Israel], and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy...

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-contents.html

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The Jewish view is that while abortion is not a crime its not a moral good either.

CHAPTER XLV

OF DEMONOLOGY AND OTHER RELICS OF THE RELIGION OF THE GENTILES

The Israelites, when they worshipped the calf, did think they worshipped the God that brought them out of Egypt, and yet it was idolatry, because they thought the calf either was that God, or had Him in his belly. And though some man may think it impossible for people to be so stupid as to think the image to be God, or a saint, or to worship it in that notion, yet it is manifest in Scripture to the contrary; where, when the golden calf was made, the people said, "These are thy gods, O Israel";[Exodus, 32] and where the images of Laban are called his gods. [Genesis, 31. 30] And we see daily by experience in all sorts of people that such men as study nothing but their food and ease are content to believe any absurdity, rather than to trouble themselves to examine it, holding their faith as it were by entail unalienable, except by an express and new law...

But what commandments are those that God hath given us? Are all those laws which were given to the Jews by the hand of Moses the commandments of God? If they be, why are not Christians taught to obey them? If they be not, what others are so, besides the law of nature? For our Christ hath not given us new laws, but counsel to observe those we are subject to; that is to say, the laws of nature, and the laws of our several sovereigns: nor did he make any new law to the Jews in his Sermon on the Mount, but only expounded the laws of Moses, to which they were subject before. The laws of God therefore are none but the laws of nature, whereof the principal is that we should not violate our faith...

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/hobbes/leviathan-j.html#CHAPTER%20XLIV

[SJackson]

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Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking the keyword or topic Israel.

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Given the fact that there are fewer than 30,000 Jews in the entire state, including two Senators, I'm not sure how many Jews these Jewish leaders lead.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I do. Every day. ;)

I was just appauled that there was a group of Jewish leaders that would back this; I'm Lutheran. I don't have a clue as to what being Jewish is all about.

Obviously from the comments in this thread, my instincts were right on and that they do not reflect the actual teachings of the Bible. At least, not the Bible I know.

[kittymyrib]

Judaism is dying. These liberal Jews think the solution is promoting same-sex marriage. With intelligence such as that, no wonder they live in Madison, WI, and vote Democrat.

[Dustbunny]

Jewish Leaders: Same-sex Marriage Ban Represents Hatred, Injustice and Persecution

No it doesn't, it represents common sense and logic.

[The Red Zone]

"Hillel Foundation" said this?

Rabbi Hillel would hang his head in shame.

[Elsie]

If Moses were around today, what do you suppose he would say to these rabbis?

UH.... the same things he said thousands of years ago???

---

NIV Leviticus 18:22
"`Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.

NIV Leviticus 20:13
"`If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.