Same-Sex Attraction and Halakhah
Same-Sex Attraction and Halakhah RABBI LEONARD LEVY This paper was approved by the CJLS on December 6, 2006 by a vote of six in favor, 8 opposed and 11 abstaining (6-8-11). Voting in favor: Rabbis Aaron Mackler, David Wise, Loel Weiss, Baruch Frydman-Kohl, Leonard Levy, Joel Roth. Voting in opposition: Rabbis Elliot Dorff, Robert Fine, Daniel Nevins, Alan Lucas, Myron Geller, Gordon Tucker, Avram Reisner, Susan Grossman. Abstaining: Rabbis Kassel Abelson, Joseph Prouser, Adam Kligfeld, Robert Harris, Myron Fenster, Philip Scheim, Mayer Rabinowitz, Paul Plotkin, Pamela Barmash, Vernon Kurtz, Jerome Epstein. How should rabbis and institutions in Conservative Judaism deal with people in :שאלה our communities who are sexually attracted to members of the same sex? In our society and in our communities, people who have been labeled homosexual :תשובה have suffered much pain and injustice. For much of the last half of the twentieth century, those who found themselves feeling sexual attraction toward members of the same sex were given the message that there was something very wrong with them. Many went into psychoanalysis or other forms of psychotherapy seeking a cure, but many did not find a cure, but rather further torment and pronounced feelings of self-loathing. Many have committed suicide. These people felt the need to hide their feelings of same-sex attraction (SSA) from their parents, other close family members and friends in fear that should those feelings be discovered (and even more so, if those feelings found expression in behavior which was discovered or disclosed), they would be rejected and disowned by those who were nearest and dearest to them.
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