Sunday, September 21, 2014

Can Jews Be Gay Openly

By Karina Frost


Judaism is known to be one of the major religions in the world and is also known to have strict rules when it comes to homosexuality. Now the Jews are in fact one of the groups that do not condone homosexual acts because they consider it to be a sin. So if one is gay and Jew, then he will most likely ask himself can Jews be gay or not even if some of them are born like that.

Now one thing to understand would be that Judaism does not have anything against homosexuals. What they do not condone to would be homosexual acts which means the erotic acts that a person will do with another of the same sex. In other words, there can be homosexuals but they cannot act upon their homosexual urges as it is the acts that are considered as sins in the faces of the Rabbis.

Now the basis of this statement would actually be from the Bible itself as this is the book where the verses of God are all kept. Now if one would open his Bible to the book of Leviticus chapters eighteen verse twenty two, then he will be able to find the basis. This verse explicitly states that if a man lies in bed with another man like he would do with a woman, then he is committing a sin.

Now while there is no actual explanation as to why God made this commandment, many Rabbis did have their own interpretations. The most common one would be that when God created the world, he only created man and woman. So naturally, homosexuality is something that is unnatural to creation.

The thing about this reason is that there actually is no basis for it which means that it is not very convincing. It is for this reason that there is an interpretation that was created by Bar Kaparrah in Talmud. He claims that homosexuality is against the teaching of marriage and children which can be found in the Torah.

Now if one would notice, the Torah only explicitly points out that men and men are not supposed to have sexual acts together. Of course this means that they left out the women who like other women. So now there would be a question as to whether lesbianism is also frowned upon too.

Now Judaism does not condone to homosexuality as a whole so this includes both gays and lesbians. Of course for the lesbian couples, they would also use the Talmud interpretation wherein procreation is a must. However, since lesbianism is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah, they are not as strict.

So in a nutshell, Judaism permits homosexuals to exist but does not permit the acts. Now the rabbis believe that some of them are actually born gay. What the rabbis do not allow is that they would carry out sexual acts with those of the same sex. To sum it all up, a Jewish gay can be like that provided he does not commit a homosexual act otherwise he will be sinning.




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