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Wednesday 24 September 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 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 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 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.

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.

So if the Torah states that a man cannot be together with another man, then one would also probably ask where this leaves lesbians. One would also probably ask whether lesbianism is allowed in this religion. Well lesbianism may not be as frowned upon, but it is still not allowed.

Now the Rabbis would actually teach that lesbianism is also not allowed as well. Of course their reason for saying so is that it is also an act of homosexuality which goes against procreation. However, lesbians are not put under as much pressure as gay men since lesbians are not explicitly mentioned in the Torah.

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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