Jumat, 26 September 2014

Can Jews Be Gay Or Not

By Karina Frost


As homosexuality is being more and more accepted in the community these days, there are still some groups that do not accept homosexuals because of the culture of the group. One of the groups that do not condone to homosexual acts would be the Jews. So the main question of the issue would be can jews be gay or not.

Now the main teaching of the Rabbis when it comes to homosexuals would be the fact that the religion itself does not condemn gays at all. What they condemn would be homosexual actions like erotic acts of people that are of the same sex. So in a nutshell, a person can be a homosexual but they are just not allowed to perform homosexual acts as this is considered a sin.

Now to see as to where this kind of teaching came from, one would first have to look at the Bible as a source. Now the main source as to where the scholars got this teaching would of course be from Leviticus eighteen verses twenty two. This verse states that a man cannot lie with another man like he would with a woman otherwise it is abhorrent thing.

Now although the verse states this, the Bible does not explicitly explain why this is forbidden in the first place. Of course the teachers would argue that this is simply because in the beginning, there was a man and a woman and no gay. They concluded that homosexuality is a sin that was created by humans.

Of course since this claim had no basis, people were not convinced of its validity at all. Now Bar Kaparrah tried to make a conclusion about this issue in Talmud by stating another teaching in the Torah. He claims that the Torah emphasizes the importance of marriage and procreation with homosexuality posing as a threat to it.

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 with this issue, the Jews also prohibited acts of lesbianism among their fellow females. The reason would also involve the teaching of having a family and procreation. However, since lesbianism is not explicitly mentioned in the Torah like how gay men are mentioned, the Rabbis 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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