Yesterday in class we discussed one question that gay American Jews were asking early (and continuously) was "what is my place in this community?"
I thought I'd share a little of my own evolution on this question, as it is so well documented!
Exhibit 1: A resolution passed and approved by the General Board of NFTY at Mechina 2003, authored by yours truly. The typos and the 17 year old reasoning are fabulous, but it remains a part of NFTY History (check out page 60 there). Most interesting is the implicit "compromise" or recognition that NFTY ought not care about the word marriage. The resolution states (or would state in proper english) that NFTY... "supports the right of same-sex couples to wed, or the equivalent thereof." (Emphasis added 2016)
Exhibit 2: An op-ed piece published in the Brown Daily Herald on Yom Kippur 2005, which coincided with National Coming Out Day. Lots of problematic pieces here, but definitely true to how I felt then after returning to the U.S. from a gap year in Israel which had pushed me hard on the pendulum towards "tradition."
Exhibit 3: An August 2014 piece on ReformJudaism.org in which I talk about coming "full spiral," so to speak, and the blessing of having such documents to serve as "time capsules" along my own growth and understanding of homosexuality and Judaism.
I would love to hear any feedback from any of you on what you find surprising or interesting in any of these "points" along my "Gay Jewish American" (or American Jewish Gay) timeline.
It is ON!
Welch's for Pesah? " Welch's Teams With Manischewitz in Battle Over Kosher Grape Juice " (NPR, 10/10/17)
1 comment:
Max-- It's wonderful to see this documentary history of your journey, and I'm proud to see you at the vanguard of NFTY's stance toward gay marriage. It made me proud to be a NFTYite at that moment in history. I know you noted the moments that you referred to your homosexuality as a "lifestyle", but at the end of your article, you spoke of it as "God-given sexuality."
I remember too advocating for the middle position of civil unions vs. marriage. I believed that government should call all types of domestic partnerships 'civil unions', leaving marriage to the religious purview. For me this was a question of church-state separation. It honestly surprises me that I will have a state-sanctioned ability to solemnize a marriage. So now that gay marriage is a "settled" question, how do the two sides of your identity reconcile this solution. As a gay man, do you appreciate the parity in terms between homosexual and heterosexual unions? As a liberal American Jew, were you frustrated by the inclusion of religious value into a civic question? Might the solution have been easier for the entire country to swallow by distinguishing between a civil union and a religious one?
Thank you for sharing your journey with us all, Max!
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