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berntout:
“we should oppose kashrus and other toeiva violations as well”
Really? Are you going to start a letter-writing campaign to politicians to urge them to close down McDonalds?
writersoul:
Not true.
Legislating something is normal is a cause of at least two ill effects:
1. It causes far greater acceptance among those who do not engage in this.
2. It encourages others who are “on the fence” to “come out” loud and clear.
The result of both #1 and #2 affect society as a whole.
And the other points also remain, as in the damage this does to kids. The other day, I saw a news picture captioned to the effect of two women and their daughter. I imagine you believe that this “daughter” has a perfectly normal life?
HaKatan: While there is nothing at all okay for anyone to be involved in such a relationship, you are being unfair. There are many children raised by same-gender parents who have perfectly normal, okay lives. And being in a community that is more accepting increases the likelihood that they grow up normally.
Now, we cannot be accepting of Assur relationships for the good of the children who are raised by them. It is indeed a challenge to not be accepting at all of anyone who engages in these practices while at the same time being completely accepting of their children, who have done nothing wrong.
HaKatan: I have no idea whether or not she has a “normal” life. Then again, do kids of divorced parents, widowed parents, etc have “normal” lives? This girl’s life may not be “normal” but she may easily be happy. “Normal” is subjective. For all I know, maybe kids do OPTIMALLY need one male and one female parent at home but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be well-adjusted without them.
It’s clear that the law COMES FROM the acceptance and not the other way around. Even just taking into account the history of the United States- there have been gay people the entire time, but why is it only a law now? Because gay relationships are accepted. Perhaps a tiny number of people have come out because of the new laws, but the same environment that made these marriages legal has ALREADY prompted gay people to come out.
“Charliehall: Who was the polytheist?”
Mitt Romney. The LDS church explicitly believes in many Gods.
“It is disingenuous to compare a politician’s polytheism with society’s normalization of same-gender marriage.”
No, it isn’t. The politician got over sixty million votes. Polytheism is normative (over six million Mormons in the US), legal in all states, and protected by the Constitution. And the prohibition against worshiping more than one God is clearly stated in all relevant source as a violation of the Noachide laws.
After reading some of these posts, can I respectfully ask the mods to either stop this thread or delete those posts that clearly do not belong in this kind of forum? We, as frum Jews, know that it is one of the few sins that Hashem calls an abomination (we read this on Yom Kippur in leining as part of the forbidden relationships). Jews who do not see anything wrong with it clearly do not belong in this forum.
notasheep-
+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Oh boy…this is going to take some time, presumably. Sam2, writersoul and Charlie…
Sam2:
This is absurd, even without bringing up the Torah’s perspective. And not only can there be no studies yet that can possibly back up your claim, but simple biology and logic makes that claim exceedingly untenable.
Could a child raised in a same-gender household still possibly “make it”? Maybe for the “lucky” ones. But is that the bar for acceptance and “normalization”? As long as it’s not guaranteed that they will commit suicide before becoming teenagers then society should allow it? This is absolutely absurd and insane! (Rather, it’s taavah and perhaps midas sedom, which they allow to supersede anything else).
Children raised by same gender parents cannot possibly be having “normal okay lives” as you astoundingly and offensively claim, unless they are robots rather than human beings with human emotions and needs. Anyone claiming such a thing likely has zero understanding of what his parents did for him from before conception and on and also has zero concept of what it means to live with two parents who are not of opposite genders.
Even if the community they live in is “accepting” of this toeiva, how would that help a confused child who may not prefer toeiva like they do, and may instead prefer a male father and female mother instead of a second female “parent”. An accepting community could actually be rubbing salt in those life-long wounds; not, as you perceive it, helping the daughter.
Sam2, there is no way that this should have ever become legalized and normalized, and it is an unprecedented and outrageous avlah to the children involved.
Let’s also add the following. Presumably, one of these women is her biological mother while the other is a mere same-gender partner. This daughter may never get to know even the identity of her own father, much less ever see him and, by extension, what a father and husband should be, as his identity could be contractually or lawfully protected as a “fertility” donor or the like.
Not to mention that the women may choose to never reveal to her who is her real father, as the women may wish to (fool themselves and think they) demonstrate that a pair of two women is just as good or better than a pair consisting of one man and one woman.
You cannot compare the pain of an absentee father (or mother) to this. A normal step-father (or step-mother) is heaven in comparison to this. Do you not see even an inkling of the utter disaster that is this toeiva marriage?
Writersoul:
How could you possibly compare this abomination (both the practice and its legalization and “normalization”) to children of divorce or orphans, R”L L”A.
What does one have to do with another? If that theoretical child has suffered the trauma of (regardless of which way) losing a stable two-parent household, CH”V, then a “new” parent, even though not the biological parent, might actually ease that trauma and would at least provide as much stability and support as possible under the circumstances as they are. But to intentionally throw children into a same-gender marriage is obscene and absurd.
You wrote “For all I know, maybe kids do OPTIMALLY need one male and one female parent at home…” So that’s only a “maybe” in your mind? Do you know of a better way? Could you possibly explain a plausible reason that a child would do better with two females or two males than with two actual parents? Biology and logic dictate that this is impossible.
But the worst part is your contention at the end of that sentence where you claim “that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be well-adjusted without them [a male parent and a female parent] implying that this is justification to allow same-gender marriage.
How dare any society subject children to this human experimentation when it’s anyways clear that it’s a disaster for these children? Raising children is not easy even in optimal circumstances. What gives you the right to intentionally make it vastly more challenging for these children (“it’s not impossible”, in your opinion, so that’s good enough to make it permitted to everyone as marriage)?
Charlie:
If you read the rest of my post then it should have been very clear why your comparison was disingenuous.
Even the goyim know (obviously without our Torah), that this is a really bad move for the kids.
Hakatan
I chose to Google it and I found quite a few articles on studies done that the kids of ss marriages are well adjusted healthy normal adults. I was surprised to find this because logically everything you are saying makes sense so I don’t know what to make of this.
Akuperma: Thanks for that explanation. I was always very bothered by the idea that I pay taxes into a system that legalizes behaviors that are against basic morality. Now I realized that they have redefined marriage. Not the way they intended rather as an economic and efficient way to deal with different situations. I can’t wait to see the heyday tax lawyers will create out of these new regulations. I’m all for polygamy being legalized now. It might just be the answer to avoid inheritance tax.
(We just have to come up with a different term to use instead of what we used to use for nesuin – the traditional act of binding man with wife. ie: my cousin just got “nesued” last night 🙂
jewish fem and charliehall: I just love watching people bring up different topics or “worse” aveiros when the subject matter at hand is tickling people’s conscience.
WIY: You can study all you like. Fact of the matter is that the family dynamics are artificial. There is no way that any such “family” can have a kiyum. It just creates a bigger bilbul and greater mashchis that ever before in history.
Morally, I don’t understand how a doctor can do ivf on a woman whose not living with her donor.
I never understood why certain people feel the need to have parades and marches to show the world why they are ‘normal’. They are clearly very insecure about themselves – conscience niggling anyone?
I don’t feel the need to shout out to everyone that I’m female and have a husband. That’s because I know that I am normal, so I don’t need to try and prove it to myself and the rest of the world.
It’s like this fuss they are all making over the film Ender’s Game, cause the author of the original book is a Mormon and very outspoken in his religious beliefs against this issue. I say well done him, carry on!
I wrote a post responding to HaKatan, but it’s not here, meaning that either I typed it and forgot to send it or it got deleted.
Oh well. I haven’t got time to rewrite it, but essentially, HaKatan, as WIY said, the FACTS contradict your claims. Nobody lives in the ideal situation because it doesn’t exist- everyone has his or her own problems with life. However intuitive what you say may be, it doesn’t seem to be backed up by fact.
Out of curiosity- which would you think better for a child, a traumatic situation in which the child loses a parent through death or divorce or a situation in which the child has two healthy, loving parents?
A situation in which the child has a father and mother who are abusive or even simply absent or a situation in which the child has two loving, caring fathers or mothers?
I’m not advocating gay relationships- I just don’t think this is THE REASON to ban gay MARRIAGE.
The best & only protest is facilitating & making more Shiduchim between men & women.
Apart from thereby reducing the % of same gender marriages, each wedding shows 1 more objection to same gender marriage.
147: If people are gay biologically, then the two participants in successful, happy marriages are just two more straight people getting married who would’ve gotten married anyway. (Okay, so it’s probably possible for a gay man to happily marry a woman, but as a countermeasure I wouldn’t count on it.)
Believe it or not, just because gay marriage is legal doesn’t mean that men aren’t marrying women anymore or that it’s uncool or whatever. That’s not the object. Men will keep on marrying women and women will keep on marrying men at the same rate before and after (assuming they marry at all, but that’s a completely separate issue).
Writersoul, please look up the definition of marriage in the dictionary. It is a coming together of two very different entities (and you can’t get more different than a man or a woman) and making them into one thing. The fact that some people wish to call their partnership a marriage makes a mockery of something I hold as very special and beautiful.
And let me tell you, and others out there, that there is really no such thing as being biologically gay. Some females may have slightly more testosterone than normal (yes, it’s there in MINIMAL amounts) and some men may have a lot less than they should but that should have no bearing on the way they view themselves. It’s only because today’s society sees it as a normal thing that people think it must mean something different. There is a biological condition which means a person can be a hermaphrodite – they can be BOTH male and female physically (although usually only one side works) or they can be neither. But this is very rare and has little to do with those ‘normal’ people.
“Even the goyim know (obviously without our Torah), that this is a really bad move for the kids.”
Apparently not. Nor do Jews, even frum Jews. Look at Mike Bloomberg’s margins in the frum parts of NYC for his last two election campaigns. And I predict that the one candidate in today’s Mayoral election who has made same sex marriage an issue won’t do very well. (Both De Blasio and Lhota are supporters of same sex marriage.)
“The best & only protest is facilitating & making more Shiduchim between men & women.
Apart from thereby reducing the % of same gender marriages, each wedding shows 1 more objection to same gender marriage.”
Not really…that’s like saying “apart from thereby reducing the % of houses bought, each apartment rented shows 1 more objection to buying houses.” It doesn’t make any sense. Just because you made a particular decision does not necessarily mean that you’re morally opposed to other decisions in general. There are tons of straight people out there who advocate for gay rights.
“please look up the definition of marriage in the dictionary. It is a coming together of two very different entities (and you can’t get more different than a man or a woman) and making them into one thing”
This can’t be a valid argument can it? Words are socially defined/constructed and have no inherent value attached to them. For instance many if not most dictionaries written recently define marriage as a legal contract between “spouses” (as opposed to man and woman).
Charlie,
I have read articles in the secular media that correctly point out the disaster that is “gay marriage”, particularly for the children, as I had posted.
As to the others you referenced, Goyim do not have the Torah and therefore don’t usually benefit from its guidance.
There are goyim who are baalei taava and/or have the midos of sedom and are destroying children and families so that two “gay” adults can call themselves “married”.
Writersoul, the “facts” do NOT contradict my “claims”. The “normality” of this abomination is very new. So that effect on kids still remains to be seen. Therefore, there cannot be any meaningful studies yet this destruction of “gay marriage” being normal and its effects on kids is still in progress.
But simply biology and logic do back up that claim.
As to your theoretical question about a child of divorce, etc. versus a child of “two loving parents”, your implication is that “two loving parents” could include “gay” couples, but this is not at all necessarily the case.
Besides, I have already answered this in my previous post.
As to abuse, I would think that intentionally placing a child in the situation of two fathers and not one mother (or the inverse) is a form of abuse. Abuse is, of course, not acceptable.
Notasheep: You’re going to make an emotional issue of the definition of a word? Words are semantics. So rename Jewish “marriage” as something else. You haven’t lost anything.
And people can be biologically gay. This is not to say that every “gay” person is that way biologically. But there are plenty of males who are naturally only attracted to males and not females. (Anyway, as Popa pointed out in an insightful post last year, the entire debate of whether ss attraction is from birth or develops later in life is wholly irrelevant. The fact is that there are men who are only attracted to men. Whether that came from genetics or something else doesn’t matter at all.)
HaKatan: Gay parents can’t be loving and supportive? Of course they can. Whether you’d consider them parents in the traditional sense of the word is up to you, but my question still stands- do you think it’s preferable to have a man and a woman raising a child in a loveless or abusive environment or two men or two women raising a child in a loving environment? (I’m obviously not saying these are the only two options- I’m just trying to make a point about priorities here.)
Notasheep: What Sam2 said.
Writersoul:
“Gay parents” cannot possibly be as loving and supportive as one mother and one father, (even if one or both of the normal and non-gay are step-parents). Men and women complement each other and offer different types of “comfort” and “support” to a child, and this entire dynamic and its unappreciated positive effects on the child simply cannot exist in “gay marriages”.
As well, in this case of “gay marriage”, one of the parents is GUARANTEED to NOT be the biological parent (as opposed to “real” marriage where, in most cases, both parents are also both biological parents). This is plainly not normal and abuse to the children to make this on par with “normal” marriage.
Of course, allowing second marriages and foster-home situations where both parents are of opposite genders does not at all contradict the sheer abomination that is this whole disaster of “gay marriage” for these and other reasons.
Although I don’t think it adds much to the point, what if society decided that a kibbutz could raise a child better than parents could and foisted that as “normal”? What would you say then?
This is so absurd it is not even debatable.
Simple biology and logic (not to mention, lihavdil, the divar Hashem) cannot be refuted.
Sam2 – I strongly object to the fact that something like that, which is a twisted abomination, can be equated to something that I hold very dear. I am not getting emotional, it’s my human right to feel this way. It seems as though human rights go only one way – those who want to shove their abnormality in our faces and call it ‘their human rights’ yet we are not allowed to use our own human rights to object.
Perhaps some people really are attracted, however it is today’s society that make that majority of them think that’s the way it must be if they like someone of the same gender a little more. Believe it or not, that is pretty normal, what’s not right here is that they then use this as an excuse for depraved behaviour and spurn normal relationships. Like I said before, there is an actual, physical condition but this is extremely rare.
Besides, the fact that most of them are extremely insecure about themselves (marches, parades, bashing others for religious views and calling them homophobic etc) goes to show that deep down there is still some part of them telling them that it’s not right – even if they don’t realise this insecurity for what it actually is.
“Besides, the fact that most of them are extremely insecure about themselves (marches, parades, bashing others for religious views and calling them homophobic etc) goes to show that deep down there is still some part of them telling them that it’s not right – even if they don’t realise this insecurity for what it actually is”
Just like the marches for Israel, right?
“midos of sedom “
Midot Sedom according to the Jewish tradition “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours” as expressed in Avot. It is what we hear from right wing Republicans on a regular basis, but you see plenty of defenses of such in the frum community. The prohibition of homosexuality in the Torah is from Sefer Vayikra, not Sefer Bereshit (and doesn’t mention women). The association of Sedom with the sin of homosexuality is a Christian take on the narrative.
Here’s the key question to my mind. Do Jews have a chiyuv to prevent Goyim from sinning? As Jews we have a chiyuv to admonish other Jews who are over aveirah. SSM is clearly against the Sheva Mitzvos. Do we have the same obligation to admonish Gentiles for violating any of the Sheva Mitzvos?
Let’s take a less emotionally charged issue. The Constitution guarantees the free practice of religion and the U.S. Statutes prohibit discrimination on the basis of religion as well. The Law protects all religions including Hinduism which is clearly Avodas Zora and is also a violation of the Sheva Mitzvos. Are Jews obligated to protest laws protecting said Avodas Zora? Note that the penalty for Avodas Zora and Arayos is the same, both for Jews and Gentiles.
That’s different. First of all, Jews as a nation, and the country of Israel are majorly persecuted just because we are Jews. No one is calling for mass genocide of homos, no one is mercilessly persecuting them for the way they behave – all religious people are saying is that it’s wrong and an abomination, but we are not systematically rounding them up and executing them, nor are we trying to bomb them in their homes. And yet they are insecure in themselves and feel the need to rally en masse in order to protest that they really are normal.
Like I said before, you don’t find hetero pride marches. That’s cause we know we’re normal, so we don’t see the need to shout about it.
But it has nothing to do with insecurity. It has to do with non-acceptance. The only way you’d campaign to be accepted is if you’re pretty secure about your identity. Same with, as whats_in_a_name said, Israel parades. Though, warning, you addressed that to HaKatan which is probably not the greatest idea unless you want to divert from this rant to another one.
And HaKatan, there is NO SUCH THING as the ideal situation. You avoided my (repeated) question about which you’d consider preferable, abusive heterosexual parents or loving homosexual parents. All of your statements about what’s good and what’s “abusive” are entirely based on broad groups. The distinctions between individual families are much more complicated. You’re making very vague, unsupported statements based on a faulty premise- that anyone at ALL has an ideal life and that the only way a child can survive without severe scarring is in such a perfect life. That is self-evidently untrue.
We’re going in circles, so if it makes you happy you can get the last word in because I’m leaving the thread. I feel like I’ve been typing the same things over and over.
Regarding the Israel parades, you can’t compare them to toeiva parades.
Israel is very clearly discriminated against and is held to an unfair political double standard, regardless of how terrible Zionism was and is for Jews. While toeiva people, on the other hand, have managed to inject into marriage their abominations and corollary child abuse as societal and legislative norms.
Nonetheless, it is highly improper for Jews (including American Jews) to march in any parade for Israel, despite the legitimacy of the political double-standard issue. Just for starters, Zionists and their supporters miss out on the entire “hein am livadad yishkon uVaGoyim lo yischashav” angle. Not to mention the disaster that was and is Zionism from a Jewish perspective and the possible higarus baUmos, inevitable chillul Hashem and “double-loyalty” accusations. But let’s not get side-tracked…
Writersoul refuses to understand the point. It is silly to even ask if “you’d consider preferable, abusive heterosexual parents or loving homosexual parents.” Would you ask if one would prefer malkus or galus, as if the preference of one makes the other something at all preferred? Besides, I have repeatedly mentioned that ANY, even “loving”, homosexual parents IS CHILD ABUSE for WILLFULLY AND INTENTIONALLY denying the child a male father and female mother which the child clearly needs for life.
Although I imagine that many people do have an “ideal life”, I addressed this point repeatedly, too. Although divorces/second marriages, etc. obviously should be allowed, it is incomparable and amoral to legislate, and promulgate as normal and expected, an extremely terrible situation for a child where s/he is guaranteed to be missing one parent of one gender as in same-gender “marriage”. This is a terrible scam and shame and even rachmanim bnei rachmanim have fallen for it. Oy meh haya lanu.
Charlie, the Sedom reference to homosexuality happens to be based in the Torah, not, lihavdil, Christendom; see various meforshim on the savages’ threats to Lot that they wanted Lot to send out the malachim because “viNeidia osam”. They wanted to have intercourse with his male guests, in case that wasn’t clear enough. That’s our Chazal.
But I wasn’t even referring to that. Rather, you can compare the legalization and “normalization” of this toeiva with the middos of sedom that Chazal have told us that Sedom possessed. Like, for example, how they stretched a person’s legs to extend all the way on the bed they prepared for him. Or how they would permanently “shorten” a person’s legs on the bed they prepared for him. All so that the bed would fit the guest. Obviously, that they brutally murdered the guest in doing so was irrelevant (or, rather, the whole point). Of course, the length of each bed was chosen specifically for this reason.
So, too, while those who have legislated and “normalized” this abomination *might* not have been as evil in intent as was Sedom, they are still severely short-changing the children by legislating and “normalizing” this abomination, all so that the bed would fit (the child’s “parents”).
I really prefer to avoid analogies, which are often imperfect to some extent, but I don’t see how else to possibly convey the point when simple logic had no effect.
“as if the preference of one makes the other something at all preferred?”
I make this analogy every time, but I’m going to make it again anyways. In the 1900’s your argument would have been “pick your poison: a white child be raised by physically and emotionally abusive white parents or loving black/interracial couple parents”.
What many are arguing here is that only one of those scenarios is poison.
“[…]IS CHILD ABUSE for WILLFULLY AND INTENTIONALLY denying the child a male father and female mother which the child clearly needs for life”
And this? You define child abuse as and I quote again for effect: “WILLFULLY AND INTENTIONALLY denying the child a male father and female mother which the child clearly needs for life”
Under your definition that you have espoused for us here, divorce is considered child abuse. Further, a single mother is child abuse. Further, the second a mother is divorced and left with her children, she must remarry immediately lest it be child abuse.
What a nonsensical definition of child abuse.
HaKatan: I’m not going to comment on your theories in this thread (because while in a perfect world they might be true they are just not), but you misunderstood the Midrash about S’dom. It was never about a bed. It was so that everyone would be equal. The Mitah was just a torture device.
whats_in_a_name, if you read my previous posts, you would understand I made the effort to distinguish this toeiva from divorce and a single parent.
The end of a marriage is a tragedy, not a first-choice. This is what makes it NOT child abuse. Although it is unfortunate for the child, there is no choice in the matter IF the marriage does end.
But there is a choice in legislating and “normalizing” “gay marriage” to begin with. That was the “WILLFULLY AND INTENTIONALLY” above.
Sam2: thank you for your comment. As to Charlie, the point still remains.
“Gay Marriage” is child abuse. Period.
What many people have forgotten is that this toeiva is discussed in the torah as ‘an abomination’. It is something that should disgust us, and if Hashem uses such wording to describe this sin, then it is a bad thing. Full stop. No matter how loving the parents may be, or abusive a male and female parent may be, it is WRONG, and therefore no good can ever come of it. Mods, it’s time to stop this thread, please.
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