Condemnation of Jerusalem Parade

Reform and non-kosher is condemned. You really missed the numerous thunderous denunciations of Reform for the past 200 years through the present? Or uproars when there’s a hint of a food establishment possibly containing non-kosher. Or of reading publications which carry inappropriate content. (Which is why the frum papers were created over the past 25 years.)

You clearly haven’t been paying attention very well to anything other than what the mainstream media or secular Jewish papers have decided for you what constitutes “news”.

Simcha: Thanks for putting it better than I did.

Joe, the difference between the sins you mention and being gay is a) being gay isn’t a sin- homosexual activity is a sin. So you will have many Orthodox people who are gay whether you know it or not, who will not act on it but still identify with other people struggling in the same way. And b) something like adultery does have another outlet, ie marrying someone available. Gay people don’t have this option.

That doesn’t mean I support the parade. I agree, the parade does explicitly support those who actually are sinning, and while I have no control over whether Israel has such a parade or not, I can still disapprove. But there are Orthodox gay people who identify themselves as gay even if they will never enter a forbidden relationship because it is a common life experience and struggle that puts them at odds with the world at large and kal vachomer the frum community, and that’s undeniable. Should they march in the parade? That’s their own cheshbon. Would I march in support? No, because I don’t agree with the rationale behind the parade. Do I think it’s weird that being gay is an identity, particularly in the Jewish world? Honestly, not really.

I don’t think anyone would take it as a sole identity. We all have multiple identities. But as identities go, it’s a pretty huge one. I certainly believe that part of the reason is that it’s a huge identifier in the general population as well, and that there’s been somewhat of a cultural leak. But honestly, I can’t totally agree with you. Given the general cultural attitude toward the identifier, I think it’s pretty rational, and for all the reasons mentioned above. Besides, they may never get to identify with the most common identifiers in the Jewish community- husband/wife, father/mother- and the family unit is HUGE in the frum community, considering that so much of our religious culture surrounds family. It’s one of the reasons why it’s shidduch crisis and not shidduch niggle or shidduch booboo- because being single and not having one’s own family unit after a certain age in the frum community can be socially isolating. So no, I don’t think it’s weird that such people would want to band together, considering that they are in effect isolated in some ways from the rest of the community.

well your original comment was about it being right, and I believe it isn’t.

this second post of yours is about why they would WANT to, and why it would “make sense”. Judaism doesn’t work that way. And that you would use the fact that it’s an identifier in the general population as a reason why it should “make sense” surprises me. I thought of you as someone who had a clearer picture than that. The fact that it’s “out there” has no bearing on who we ARE or how we view our places in this world. The fact that the world is using this painful reality some individuals live with as a way to hold their heads high is unfortunate, not something to join up with. and that whole end about feeling isolated from the frum community so it makes sense to join up with a group who encourage violating Torah itself? Please tell me you don’t mean that.

My sister had liver issues and was told by her doctor at age 18 that her liver could not support a pregnancy. She knew that she could not marry someone who was able to have children. It was beyond painful, but she didn’t isolate herself, she made a point of finding frum people who would be mechazeik her, who were older and single, who were married and childless, and who were married mothers of huge families. She did not align herself with secular groups fighting for zero population growth. She was not her liver. She was not childlesness. she was not single and childless but also frum. We may have many identifiers, but we don’t have many identities. Who we ARE is a piece of Hashem embodied in a physical body with all that comes along with it.

I know of people who were cured from this dreadful machla and went on to lead happy, successful, marriages and productive lives.

So you say. But you’re wrong. In fact there have been public reports of folks cured and subsequently married.

Plenty of people who never were were cured of being.

Health, Joseph- would it be so theologically challenging for you to accept that God created gay people and that reparative therapy doesn’t work for everyone? Well, if it’s hard for you to accept that imagine how much harder it is for a gay person to accept that. Imagine how theologically challenging it is for a person to realize that through no fault of their own, they are attracted to their gender. Imagine how hard it is for a person, that no matter how much psychotherapy they try, no matter how hard they cry on Yom Kippur for freedom from this challenge, they still are attracted to the same gender?

Imagine how much harder it is for them to be labeled freaks and perverts in our community? How jewish news sites seem to label them as to’eivah? How they feel like they need to choose between frumkeit and achieving emotional/psychological/physical fulfillment because should they dare decide that they can’t handle being alone they will be ostracized from the community… that in this regard frumkeit is all or nothing? Is it any wonder why they fall of the derech, why they choose companionship and love over halacha? Why they feel they have no place in the Orthodox community and must reject it entirely?

Is it any wonder why they would want to have a parade in our holy city… to be able to tell us that they exist and that they no longer want to be judged and marginalized by us? They want to send a message to gay teenagers and young adults who are in hiding that they can still be happy… that there’s no place for them in Orthodoxy? That depression and suicide is not the only option (and unfortunately, it is a serious problem for those who feel they have no place in our communities)?

The parade is a terrible thing… it is publicizing, promoting, and celebrating a lifestyle that violates the Torah. It’s even worse because it is being done in our holy city. But before we condemn we must understand why they are doing what they are doing We have to understand what challenges they face in our own backyard. We have to ask ourselves if any of their motivations and concerns are indeed legitimate. And we have to ask ourselves, are doing everything we can on our part to solve those legitimate problems, or are we making a terrible situation worse?

It’s quite possible that there is absolutely nothing we can do within the guidelines of halacha to make them feel accepted, respected, and loved… or at the very least not judged. But we must try. We have a responsibility on our end to do what we can to ensure that a parade like this in our holy city is unnecessary.

Health

“Being gay, if you want to be Dan L’caf Zecus, is a Mental Disorder.

If not, they are Resashyim Gemurrim!”

a. Just becasue it a mental disorder doesnt mean it is curable. You can call it what you want that doesnt change anything WS wrote.

b. Just becasue somebody succumbs to a yetzer harah, doesnt make them a rasha gamur. I know a poster here who sometimes is oiver anoas devarim and often lies (see for example this post http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/condemnation-of-jerusalem-parade#post-616490) That doesnt mean he has a mental disorder nor does it mean he is a rasha gamur. He, like all of us has a yetzer hara and unfortunately sometimes stumbles.

I’ll admit I have the same struggle (not the lying so much, but definitely the onas devarim)

Subtitle

That is certainly true.

Though I meant my comment in reference to WS’s comment to which Health was responding.

I did not mean it in regard to a parade to celebarate thhis kind of lifestyle

Health:

The fact that reparative therapy/conversion therapy does NOT work is not “PC garbage”.

It is proven scientific fact.

Conversion therapy, moreover, can be harmful and dangerous, resulting in higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among patients who enroll in the so-called therapy.

It has been widely discredited. You are absolutely off your rocker if you think this is in any way political.

Ubiq -“Just becasue it a mental disorder doesnt mean it is curable.”

I didn’t say it was! I just quoted from NARTH!

“You can call it what you want that doesnt change anything WS wrote. Though I meant my comment in reference to WS’s comment to which Health was responding.”

You’re too busy with putting me down that you didn’t pay attention to what I was responding to!

This is what I was responding to:

“Reparative therapy has essentially been debunked and proven to cause a lot of pain, trauma and damage.”

The Jerusalem parade was not the same as the Tel Aviv one or the one in NYC.

Reparative therapy as a broad-based effective treatment has been debunked. Can a couple individual people theoretically benefit from therapy? Who knows. But as an industry, in which one would expect gayness to be cured, it is debunked. And it has been proven to cause pain, trauma and damage in the many for whom it did not work, as jfem mentioned. In response to ubiq, you did say it was curable by saying that therapy works.

“This parade is not a show pf solidarity with people struggling with these issues neither is it a protest against discrimination, as some posters have tried to claim.

This is parade to celebrate this kind of lifestyle,( this is who I am and im proud of it) hint, it lies in the name.”

You’re conflating two issues. People being gay and people engaging in homosexual activity. It is very likely that someone who has this struggle might want to identify with others in a similar situation in solidarity. While one may not have to feel pride, theoretically, one need not feel shame either. Sinning, of course, is another matter. While the parade does celebrate homosexual activity, and is therefore not hashkafically or halachically correct, it’s not beyond the pale for people to feel solidarity solely on the identity part. And that’s not a sin. But lifestyle and identity are two vastly different things here.

Health,

Absolutely Correct

It depends on who is doing it

The gov’t will allow parents to give gender hormones to children who they claim act like the opposite gender ,but conversion therapy [which has worked hundreds of times in different forms -ask any old mashgiach) is Banned

The fall 2012 issue of Dialogue features a 21 page article from Elon Karten Ph.D a practicing psychologist who deals with many frum people struggling with this problem.

In the article he documents that the “taskforce” that condemned “reparative therapy” consisted of individuals who were on record about their positions before the selection while those who were more neutral were turned away.

the six member board consisted of

Judith M Glasgold- Board member of the Journal of Gay and Lesbian Psychotherapy.

Jack Drescher- well know gay activist.

Lee Beckstead- Self identified gay man.

Beverly Green- Co-editor of APA Gay and Lesbian Division 44 series on Psychological Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues.

Robin Lin Miller- worked for Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Roger Worthington- Chief Diversity Officer and University of Missouri and recipient of the 2001 Catalyst award from the LGBT Resource Center.

This is the “neutral board that “investigated” reparative therapy and then condemned it as harmful.

In the article he further notes that the study by Dr. Robert Spitzer actually did find that sexual conversion therapy does in fact work and that study was consistent with an earlier study by MacIntosh in 1994.

Yes Dr. Spitzer did come under harsh criticism from the gay community and yes the APA did distance itself from his work however when approached the editor of the Journal that originally published the article Dr. Kenneth Zucker Ph.D, to ask to issue a retraction he replied

“You can retract data incorrectly analyzed, to do that you publish an erratum. You can retract an article of the data was falsified-or the journal retracts it if the editor knows it. As I understand it he’s just saying ten years later that he wants to retract his interpretation of the data. Well we’d probably have to retract hundreds of scientific papers with regard to interpretation, and we don’t do that”.

I would encourage the posters who state that there is no proof that therapy can work in these cases to read the entire article which is full sourced.

Health, please refer to my above comment: “The fact that reparative therapy/conversion therapy does NOT work is not ‘PC garbage’. It is proven scientific fact.”

The fact is that nearly every professional medical association out there (American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, etc) has disavowed conversion therapy. You have to be a serious conspiracy theorist (looking at you, mentsch1) in order to believe otherwise (and, Time for Truth, “ask any old mashgiach” is not a reputable source, sorry.)

Truth, JONAH was convicted of consumer fraud in New Jersey last year and shut down. I don’t think they are still in operation. I also believe that their 501 c 3 status has been revoked. So the IRS and the NJ superior court found their claims…unconvincing.

I recall the Executive Director of JONAH in 2009 coming and making a presentation at the kiruv organization I was working for at the time. I was not front-line working with youth as my colleagues were. Some had smicha. All were well educated. My colleagues were by and large closer to a chareidi or RWMO outlook than I and I can also recall quite clearly his inability to answer their straightforward questions and my colleagues being unimpressed with the theory and the practice as described after spending hours with him.

As well, the RCA in 2012 issued a statement disavowing their previous lukewarm recommendation of JONAH and repudiating its methodology.

The testimony about their methods revealed at the trial are shocking for any Torah Jew, to say the least. I won’t post here but you can find it yourself.

So….you might want to hold off on recommending JONAH

Mods -“I don’t find humor in your name calling”

“It has been widely discredited. You are absolutely off your rocker if you think this is in any way political.”

When she implied that I’m off my rocker – Why did you delete my post and not her’s?

Jewishfeminist

I did not reference conversion therapy

I mentioned articles from people who formerly identified as LGBT and then switched

These articles are out there, and many talk about the abuse they suffer at the hands of their former friends for having the audacity to say that it is possible to go straight.

I am in the health care field, and I have been reading science articles critically since school. I always keep my mind open to both sides. But if you think that there is no agenda here, and that agenda’s don’t drive science, then you are fooling yourself. Much of the medicine I practice is based on theory’s that are tentative at best, and often driven by agenda’s. (The biggest agenda is the desire to not be sued, which influences the way we practice. I wish I could say that all are actions are based strictly on whats good for the patient, but alas that is not the case)

Health

“I didn’t say it was [i.e curbale]! I just quoted from NARTH!”

true you never said it though it is ahrd for me to otherwise follow the logic in this post of yours:

http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/coffeeroom/topic/condemnation-of-jerusalem-parade/page/2#post-616614

“Reparative therapy has essentially been debunked and proven to cause a lot of pain, trauma and damage.”

I dont follow, you responded to that with “Being gay, if you want to be Dan L’caf Zecus, is a Mental Disorder.

If not, they are Resashyim Gemurrim!”

Do you mind elaborating? He says Reparative therapy doesnt work. To which you reply It is either a mental disorder or they are resahim?

JF2 -“Which later posts? What sources? I don’t “clearly see” anything at all.”

I realize that! You only see what you want to see – namely with your gay bias!

I’ll repeat it: “Why don’t you rebutt Ben Levi’s post of -“The fall 2012 issue of Dialogue features a 21 page article from Elon Karten etc.?!?”

“If you believe the conclusions of the American Medical Associational to be nothing more than “popular opinion” and “PC”, then I really don’t know what else there is to say.”

Obviously you love to misconstrue what they said – I wonder why!

From the AMA’s website:

“the use of “reparative” or “conversion” therapy that is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation.”

If you read my post – Jewish Feminist – I wrote – “Being gay, if you want to be Dan L’caf Zecus, is a Mental Disorder.

If not, they are Resashyim Gemurrim!”

There is nothing in that statement – that contradicts the AMA!

Mentch and subtitle: Read my posts. That was the entire premise of my claim in the first place.

Jewish Feminist.

Yes the fact is that the AMA has reputed reparative and conversion therapy.

However as I noted a cursory check of the board that supposedly conducted a “neutral and non-biased” investigation leading to this conclusion all had publicly and adamantly formed their opinions beforehand.

This is no theory, it is fact.

Verifiable fact.

And any non-biased study done using the same methods of scientific research that are always used shows it does work.

This is a point that Karten himself a practicing psychologist makes again and again in the article I previously referenced witch is fully sourced.

And non-conspiratorial look into the fact shows one basic thing.

TO enter therapy a simple premise is required.

That it is better to be “straight” then “gay”.

That goes against the entire core of the pride agenda. And that is why therapy is being viewed as “non-workable”.

What I fond interesting is that using similar statistics why is marriage therapy not deemed harmful?

Ubiq -“Health -Thanks! Got it”

You’re welcome!