[Crossposted on Alas, TADA and Family Scholars Blog. Anti-LGBT comments aren’t allowed in comments to this post on Alas.]
Mark Blechner, a former Orthodox Jew who became estranged from his religion as a consequence of accepting his homosexuality, brings up the question of same-sex marriage — not civil, but religious — as necessary to the mental health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Orthodox Jews.
Harry Stack Sullivan (1953), the American psychiatrist and founder of interpersonal psychoanalysis, said that the self is constructed of reflected appraisals. For any minority that experiences bigotry, the self is exposed constantly to reflected appraisals that are degrading and humiliating. It happened to the Jews in Germany, and it happened to blacks in white-ruled South Africa. For the Jews, one of the solutions was to found the state of Israel, a nation where their Jewish identity is valued proudly. The same has happened in post-apartheid South Africa, where the blacks are now in charge and deciding their own fate.
For gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, a similar organizational change is needed. Lesbians now have the group Orthodykes, and there is a smaller group of gay male Orthodox Jews that meets regularly. However, they need
more. They need a group of Orthodox gay and lesbian rabbinic scholars who as a group can publicly challenge the Orthodox interpretation of the Bible, people who can study the Torah and Talmud, and argue with the religion on its own terms. They also need Orthodox gay and lesbian synagogues, where Jewish family life can be adapted to gay and lesbian couples and their children, where gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews can develop their own communities with their own affirmative attitudes and rituals, so that gays and lesbian couples can stand under the chuppah (marriage canopy) and celebrate their marriages, blessed by a gay Orthodox rabbi.When we have such things in place, many of the mental health conflicts experienced by Orthodox gays and lesbians will be solved. Then, the therapists and psychoanalysts who work with them can focus on more usual forms of psychopathology, not those that are caused by a prejudiced society.
For me, the sentence that is the most striking is “For any minority that experiences bigotry, the self is exposed constantly to reflected appraisals that are degrading and humiliating.” I think that’s correct, but it brings up the question: What is bigotry? That’s a question I want to explore in an upcoming post, hopefully this week.
(Source of quote: Blechner, M. (2008). Selective Inattention and Bigotry: A Discussion of the Film Trembling Before G-d. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 12(3), 195-204.)
I don’t understand it – both the Bible and the Torah are pretty explicit on their deity’s views on homosexuality. It’s not something that can be removed, without admitting that the entire thing is just a cultural text that was written by humans, and can be changed by humans. At that point, does religion hold any sway?
I’m an atheist, and one of the reasons why I don’t believe in any established religion is the fact that religious practices change and evolve alongside culture. Re-writing the bible/torah/koran to accept gays and lesbians is a noble endeavour, and I wish them all the best in that regard, but it’s hard for me to realize how they can still believe in the holiness of the text, when they are calling for it to be edited by human beings.
I mean, it’s not a question of interpretation – the Abrahamic religions have a very, VERY long history of discrimination and bigotry. It’s part of the texts of these “holy” books, along with child-killing, slavery and all the nasty stuff you can find in the old testament (which is still part of the Bible you know, Christians can’t just wish it away or pretend it doesn’t exist) and sometimes even in the new testament. At some point, you can’t argue with the fact that it says, in pretty black and white terms, that the God of Israel hates Gay people, and hates them with a passion. There’s no way of getting around that fact without re-writing it, or editing stuff out.
And that just shows how human-centric, and human-based, all these religions are. In that case, it becomes nothing more than a cultural thing. And at that point, wouldn’t the most sane thing be to just give up believing? It would make them a lot happier in the long run, I think. I mean, turning to agnosticism or atheism would resolve the issue right there and then. Or they can try to turn to a new religion or start an offshoot. But to do that in the first place, you’re going to have to admit that it’s all just cultural. That it was humans who wrote the Torah and the Bible and the Koran. More specifically, it was horrible old bigoted men who wrote those books, which is why, when you really read them in full, they are so hostile towards gays and women and anyone who dares to be different.
It makes far more sense to just realize that these religions are inherently hostile towards them, and that the sanest thing would be to give it up. I know there are some gay friendly Christians and Jews, and that’s great, but I would argue that they haven’t even read their “holy” texts and that they don’t go to Church.
I know that science changes too, but science is a HUMAN-BASED effort, by HUMANS for HUMANS, and therefore, we are allowed to make mistakes. Religion claims to be from God itself (I refuse to call any God Him or Her, because if there was a God, why would it need a gender??) -but if humans change the religious practices and re-edit the texts and re-classify the moral codes, then isn’t that proof that religion and god are nothing more than abstract ideas that exist purely in the human mind?
It just boggles my mind that there can be people who want to reform the religious texts (for good purpose), yet still believe that the texts are from God. If you truly believed it was from God, then you wouldn’t dare try and change it. The fact that some are trying to, means they aren’t “true” believers, and I think that’s a good thing, but I think it’s something they have to realize.
Focusing on the rest of the quote, no, I don’t think that negative self-appraisals will just cease when there are LGBQTI orthodox temples. Why not argue for abandoning orthodoxy in favor of reformist communities?
At the end of the day, we can’t all — nor should we — move to Israel to celebrate and be proud of our jewish identities. It would be better to erradicate anti-semitism and homophobia, and transphobia, and racism where it exists rather than to tell everyone to retreat to their safe spaces. Yes, I understand the need for such spaces as a mental break from the continual onslaught of bigotry and stupid that comes at most everyone from all sides. But that doesn’t combat said bigotry. To stay in the safe spaces is a luxury, but we cannot all bask there for the rest of our lives – unfortunately.
But then where is my POC temple? Or are jews of color so small a minority outside of NYC that we cannot form one due to logistics? I would submit that perhaps LGBTQI jews outside of NYC face the same obstacles.
Korolev starts out OK with:
More to the point – a Jewish identity built on such redaction cannot really be called Orthodox anymore. Without for a moment doubting the sincerity of the Jewish feeling involved, phrases like “gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews” are oxymorons if we take the common, objective, standard definitions of “gay and lesbian” and “Orthdox Jew”.
Unfortunately, Korolev then loses it with stuff like:
Child killing?
Are you serious? Could we have a citation please?
Slavery?
The Jewish Bible clearly was reformist in its day, and Rabbinical Judaism continued that trajectory – including politically difficult rulings like the one that forbade returning a refugee slave to their gentile owner in neighboring countries.
“Common” and “standard” are fair enough words, but there is no such thing as an “objective” definition of who is or isn’t an Orthodox Jew. They’re all subjective definitions. If a minority of Jews want to define it some other way, that is no more subjective than how you define it.
Bed David, have you READ the bible? You need quotes for child killings, genocide, slavery sanctioned by the Lord of Hosts!? Off the top of my head, Judges and Isaiah, but seriously, it’s not much easier to find a passage that lacks atrocities than one that has them.
I have some respect for those who defend the Old Testament as ‘what the times needed’, ‘what the contemporaries would understand’, and even ‘a metaphor of something or else’… but I have none for those that are ignorant of their own holy texts.
Of course, if you are not Jewish/Christian/Muslim, I apologize. There’s no need to be familiar with those particular fairy tales… well, unless you intend to argue about something that directly relates.
From elsewhere in Blechner’s essay:
Korolev, you do not seem to understand how ‘those people’ work. They believe that the holy text is the inerrant Word of the Lord. The Lord will not allow the word to be corrupted. Every time that someone translates or redacts the holy text, God makes sure that the results reflect his intent.
Thus, they will sit down, read the holy text, and reflect on it. Eventually, they will realize that Lord meant that homosexuals should be accepted, and they will explain their understanding and chain of thought so that everyone capable of logical reasoning will have no choice but agree with them. The Lord will not disagree with them, and let them put their thoughts down – thus their interpretation will reflect his will.
Unfortunately, not everyone who follows the holy text will agree with them, and they will in effect split from the larger body… but they will know that they are correct and Orthodox. And it will be good.
A link to a survey examining how much Americans know about religion, by religious affiliation:
http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx
I thought it may be relevant to this discussion.
Korolev – yes, there’s a lot of things in the Old Testament that we wouldn’t do today. The whole premise of Christianity is that the Lord was unsatisfied with the relationship between Himself and humanity and sent Christ down to us to fix it. God isn’t telling his prophets to have bears eat kids anymore, nor does he direct us to slaughter populations. The law still exists, but it’s to be applied with compassion and love. The intent is to worship God, not the law.
Sebastian, I took the test. Got 100%. I took a look at the percentages on the individual questions and was pretty appalled at how many people don’t know that (for example) Pakistan is a majority Islamic nation, what religion Mother Teresa was, etc. Now, who was a seminal figure in the Great Awakening – that I can see only 11% of the population getting. But the other stuff looked pretty straightforward to me.
I’m not surprised, but then, you are hanging around this site, and interact with a lot of different people (and a lot more politely than, for example, I do)
You are hardly representative of any group, not even MIT grads (IHTFP too) The people who conducted the survey claim to have controlled for education, etc. and the religious people still mostly came behind the godless ones.
Perhaps the religious people are focused on what they’re supposed to be doing, rather than on learning the theological differences between Buddhism and Hinduism.