My Complicated Relationship with my Parents and the American Elections

My parents took my leaving the religious Jewish life style very badly. At first there was a lot of crying, screaming and some nasty things were said. For about a year and a half after I told them, things were very awkward between us. They kept me in their lives because they loved me, but they were terrified that any of their friends might find out that I was not religious. So while I knew they loved me (and they told me this often), I also felt that they were embarrassed by me and ashamed of me.

After this difficult and harsh reaction, I expected the worse when I told them I was gay. But my parents surprised me. While this news was very hard for them to handle, they knew that it was not something they could change and that since they wanted me in their life, they would have to figure out a way to live with me being gay. And today, I am happy to say that my relationship with my parents is better than it has been in years. We get along well and are able to spend a lot of time together. Not everything is perfect. They obviously still do not want their friends and our extended family to know that I am not religious or that I am gay, but I have made my peace with that issue. It is their problem, not mine. But all in all, for the first time in years, I feel comfortable and no longer out of place when I am with my parents.

The one subject that seems to get me very uncomfortable and pretty upset when talking with my parents is actually the US presidential elections. My parents are hardcore Republicans. They believe Obama is utter evil and his election would mean "the end of democracy in America". While I am no fan of Obama and cannot imagine that I would ever vote for him, I could also never vote for Romney and the Republicans. How could I vote for people that campaign on hate? How could I vote for someone that supports amending the US Constitution with a homophobic clause?

I know that you all must be thinking, "just don't talk politics". But the politics are just the microcosm. What really hurts me is that my parents can support someone that says I should NEVER be able to marry who I love (FYI, Romney is also against civil unions). I really hope that one day I will be lucky enough to find a guy that loves me and wants to spend the rest of his life with me and that I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him. It hurts to know that my parents would not want to see any such relationship recognized at marriage. It hurts to know that they would want that written into the law. It is beyond my understanding how my parents can love me as much as they do and still support such a law. I cannot fathom how millions of people around the country that I have never met, could be fighting for my (and of course millions of other's) right to marry and my own parents that love me would be against it.

I know my parents are Orthodox Jews and that Orthodox Judaism will never recognize gay marriage. Frankly, I do not care. If you believe in some bronze age book of myths and rules that cannot change, that is your right. But the government does not work off that book. The US government is suppose to be about freedom and equality before the law. So just like my parents would recognize any man and woman they know as civilly married if some judge said it was so, I would hope they could do the same for me. But that is not the case. Any love that me and some guy might share someday, will never be good enough in my parents eyes to receive the title "marriage" and I do not understand why.

The Nonsensical "Values" of Conservatism

According to the Torah, the Jewishness of a child is determined by the father. I know that many of readers will be surprised to read that because today everyone knows that a child's Jewishness is determined by the mother. But if you were to read the Torah, you will see that the many lists of different character's lineage only contain men. Women/mothers did not enter the writer's heads. So what changed? When the Roman Empire conquered Ancient Judea, it became very common for Roman soldiers to rape Jewish women. When a married woman was raped, there was no way of knowing if her child was her husband's or the Roman soldiers. So the Rabbis of the time decided to switch the determining parent from the male to the female.

I know that must surprise many of my readers as well. Rabbis at one point in history actually decided to change and adapt. For thousands of years Judaism revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem. When the Temple was destroyed, the Rabbis once again adapted and changed the religion to survive. All this happened before the idea of "conservatism" was invented (I am referring to the general social/political idea and attitude. Not to be confused with the Conservative religious sect of modern Judaism). 

Today conservatives around the world, Jewish and not Jewish believe that change must be fought. They believe they have certain practices, certain ideas or "values" and any discussion that things might have changed over the last tens, hundreds or thousands of years is simply wrong. But if people had always thought this way, their religions that they love so much would have died out hundreds or thousands of years ago. The world is always changing and smart people know how to learn and adapt where as conservatism insists on staying the same and refusing to adapt as if their attitude will stop time from passing. 

Today religious Jews are absolutely panicked about intermarriage and "assimilation". If a Jewish man marries a non Jewish woman, his bloodline and his lineage are lost to the Jewish people and any children he fathers with his non Jewish wife will not be Jewish. They believe that if this growing trend continues, Judaism as they know it and accept it will disappear. However, since history shows that the Rabbis can and have switched the determining parent between the man and the woman in the past, wouldn't it make sense for Rabbis to say it is enough that one parent be Jewish? Than there would be no danger of their religion vanishing. But their conservative mind set tells them that they cannot bend. The world must not change and their religion must not change. 

A few days ago, 40,000 ultra-orthodox Jewish men went to a rally at Citi-Field in New York to listen to Rabbis warn them about the dangers of the internet. These Rabbis commanded their followers to avoid the internet and warned them that it is evil. (Obviously new technologies and unrestricted access to knowledge is very dangerous to ultra-Orthodox Judaism). One Rabbi, Rabbi Wachsman told the crowd that whoever did not follow these new edicts and bands on the internet would not be able to get into heaven. 

Obviously, I really don't care if people believe Facebook and Gmail will stop them from getting into fantasy "wonderland".  But I must ask again, why be so conservative? Why would the ultra-Orthodox not use the internet to communicate between communities around the globe and share ideas on their religion? There is no value to this kind of conservatism. 

The same conservative attitude is causing all the grief in America over gay marriage. The conservative says that "marriage has always been between one man and one woman and therefore cannot change". Ignoring the fact that that statement is in no way whatsoever even slighly historically accurate, why can't marriage change? Through most of history, marriage was all about producing children. Today marriage is about love. So why can't the "institution" adapt and include the love of two men or two women? If you don't agree with gay marriage, than don't have one. But how does it affect you if someone else does? What do conservatives gain by telling people no? 

GOProud, Orthodox Gays and Other "Queer" Combinations

Controversial gay activist Dan Savage was recently asked to apologize for comments he made about the Bible. His exact words were "We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people, the same way we have learned to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about shellfish, about slavery, about dinner, about farming, about menstruation, about virginity, about masturbation". The main group demanding this apology, is a group called GOProud, the "gay wing" of the Republican party. While I appreciate that members of GOProud are homosexuals that tend to be fiscally conservative and prefer small government (2 opinions I personally agree with), I cannot understand their social conservatism. How can they defend the evil the Bible says about homosexuals and at the same time call themselves proud gays? 


Even more so, I do not understand how this group can endorse a a candidate for the presidency that wants to write into the US constitution an amendment that is anti gay marriage. I understand party politics. I understand that members of this group can be gay and still religious and therefore don't want their churches and religious institutions to have to change. However, I cannot understand how this group can abandon their fellow human beings that are fighting for what they feel to be their civil rights. I can't understand how they can endorse the homophobia of the Bible and yet claim to be proud?


Similarly, there is a growing trend in Israel of openly gay, orthodox Jews. These men wear kippot, women that dress according to Jewish conservative standards, keep Jewish dietary laws, as well as the Jewish Sabbath and have openly homosexual relationships and march in gay pride parades. Again, this is a group of people that accept the homophobia of the Torah to be the word of the one true "god", but at the same time are proud of their homosexuality? 

While talking about a group of openly gay Catholics in the episode of "Bullshit" dealing with the Vatican, Penn Jillette says, "A gay Catholic seems like a Jewish Nazi to us". While Orthodox Judaism is a little less harsh than the Catholic Church in regards to their view of homosexuals, I have to admit that I find the combination to be somewhat ridiculous and to a large extent self hatting. How can someone claim to both be proud of who they are, including their homosexuality and at the same time believe that an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscience god condemns and hates homosexuality? 






Obviously I agree with Savage and Penn when they dismiss the bible as "bullshit" (their word choice, not mine). How can a book so full of hate and evil be true? But there are these groups that have somehow reconciled their gay pride and their belief in this book and I simply cannot understand how they do it. I am a huge proponent and individual rights and freedoms. I am the last person that will tell these people that they have to change their views or anything like that. But I am genuinely curious about how they mix these contradictions in their lives. I would love to ask any of my readers that have any insight on the subject to please comment on this post. Are these groups delusional or is there something that I am missing?

A Passover Discussion about Gay Marriage

I spent the first days of this Passover with my parents at a hotel at the Dead Sea. These religious holiday getaways are generally pretty boring, but it was nice spending the time with my family. Saturday afternoon at the hotel, a rabbi was giving a class on "religious coercion and Jewish law". Knowing my extreme disdain for religion and especially for religious coercion, my parents thought it would be interesting if I went to the lecture with them.

To be honest, the lecture was surprisingly good. The Rabbi was as opened minded as Orthodox Judaism can allow. His overall point was "if people want to live in sin, forcing them to live according to Jewish law won't make them love god and want to live according to the Torah". The interesting part came after the lecture when my mom wanted to discuss what I thought about the matter.

The discussion started out as a debate on morality. My mom thinks religion, specifically Judaism is the proper moral way of life. I explained why I felt it was immoral in general and specifically not a life style for me. She responded by saying that my dislike for religion is simply because of "my life situation", which translates to "because I am gay". And at that point, the conversation became about gay marriage.

I tried to explain to my mom that she can be against gay marriage and hate it all she wants. But that still doesn't mean she has to expect others to agree with her or live by those same rules. I explained that she already recognizes civil, Christian, Muslim, Hindu etc marriages which according to her belief system are not real marriages. But she said that gay marriage would "destroy the moral fabric of society".

Its funny how many people use that line, but no one really seems to know what it means. How would gay marriage destroy the moral fabric of society? Would it create more killers, more thieves? Would 2 gay men living together and being able to file taxes jointly create more rapists?

My mothers final line was "just don't call it marriage". But again, why not? What is marriage? The way I see there are basically 3 major kinds of marriage. The first is the religious kind. The "holy union" declared in some ceremony, by some form of clergy. In this kind of marriage, each religion and each clergy gets to decide their own rules. I really don't expect Orthodox Judaism or the Catholic Church to start performing gay marriages (and I really don't care if they ever do).

While gay religious marriage might be more complicated, the next 2 types of marriage are perfectly suitable for 2 men or 2 women - social and intra-couple. Marriage is a social took to create families. I can think of no good reason why 2 people of the same gender cannot be a family. Even without marriage, brothers, sisters, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters are all family. Of course some people make it an issue of offspring, but infertile couple can marry, so that can't really be an issue. The intra-couple form of marriage is simply when a couple wants to publicly declare their love and commitment to one another publicly. This is completely personal and no one outside of the couple really gets to have a say in the matter.

But of course all the logic in the world will not convince the extremely religious/conservative to tolerate (let's not even talk about accepting) someone else's values. But being anti-marriage equality is not going to make there be less homosexuals. It is just going to continue to treat homosexuals as second class citizens. And in the end, having a country which does not treat all its citizens equally, really is the destruction of the moral fiber of society.

Why be Proud?

I remember once coming out to someone and their answer was "that is a difficult life choice." And my response was "it is not a choice. Why would anyone chose this? If I could, I would be straight, but I cannot." I said this because I was newly out of the closet and scared. I was scared about how my family would take the news. I was scared about how I would be seen in society and whether society would reject me. I knew that being openly gay is not an easy thing to live with and I was terrified. I really wished I could be straight.

Today I would never say anything like that. I love being gay. It is true that it has made things difficult for my family. It is true that in my life I will have to deal with horrible homophobic people. I might not be able to legally get married (depending on where I end up living). But I can accept all that now. I have embraced my sexuality and my life is much better for it. The world is full of smart, wonderful, sweet, kind, beautiful guys and I love that I can enjoy that. When I love someone, I want everyone to know it. Why should my love be any different than a heterosexual person's love? Why should I let archaic social standards make me feel that I am less than anyone else? Who are they to decide that?


I very often hear things like...
"I don't hate gays, I just don't understand why they need the parades."
"What is gay pride? There is no such thing as straight pride."

When was the last time a young straight boy or girl killed themselves because they thought their very happiness would hurt their family? How many countries in the world put people to death for being heterosexual? Being gay is illegal in 78 countries around the world. In 7 countries -soon to be 8 if the Ugandan parliament passes the law they are trying to pass, gays are executed. In the US, among the top causes of death for LGBT teenagers is suicide.

Right now in the US, the Republican party is holding primaries. All the contenders disagree with each other on almost every issue. The only 2 issues that they all agree on are, no gay marriage and the return of "Don't ask "Don't Tell" banning gays in the military. They travel around the country spewing their hate in front of cheering crowds. Gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals off all ages see these political events. Their personal lives, their love is a political issues. They hear the cheers of the crowds full of strangers that hate them. All this is very damaging to an LGBT person's self image.

To counter act this damage, we must have the pride parades and the parades should be loud and colorful. All those that have been made to feel like they are less, need to see and hear the parade so they can know they do not have to feel that way. All the young teens that think they are facing a future of misery, need to be shown that it does not have to be that way. And it is important that these parades are not confined to San Francisco, New York, Barcelona, Tel Aviv etc. The parades need to happen in Oklahoma City, Arlington, Jerusalem and other "conservative" cities that wear their hate as a symbol of pride. The hate mongers need to know that they cannot force their intolerant standards onto others. And more importantly, the scared locals that are still in the closet need to know that they do not have to feel like they most hide who they are and that they are no less than anyone else. They need to know they can be proud.