Leah Schnitzer Shabbaton - Judaism and Sexuality

Feb. 27-29, 2004

 

Rabbi Ayelet Cohen from Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, a self-styled gay and lesbian congregation, visited Adath Shalom during the last weekend in February to lead the Leah Schnitzer Shabbaton.  The focus of the Shabbaton was Judaism and Sexuality, and particularly homosexuality.

 

On Friday evening, Rabbi Cohen discussed a number of classical Jewish aggadic (i.e., non-legal) texts emphasizing the importance of respecting human dignity even at the cost of ignoring some negative mitzvoth of the Torah. (For Conservative view of ethics and Jewish law see.)

 

On Saturday, Rabbi Cohen presented the dvar Torah with emphasis on the human values we can derive from what otherwise seem mundane details about building the Mishkan in the desert.  Then, after a Shul lunch, Rabbi Cohen launched her main presentation by reviewing Jewish marriage over the years.  We tend to think that the institution of marriage, and its rituals, have remained unchanged, but this is demonstrably untrue.  Moreover, none of our patriarchs or matriarchs had marriages that could be said to provide models for the modern Jew.  Rabbi Cohen then went on to explain that a rabbinically valid wedding can be effected in three ways:

The bride has no active role and is treated as property.  As she pointed out, most Jews accept the traditional ceremony only because they do not understand it.

 

Rabbi Cohen went on to say that, if one accepts the rabbinic concept of marriage, homosexual marriage is impossible for a number of reasons, among them the fact that Jewish law prohibits a Jewish male from purchasing another Jewish male.  However, if Jewish marriage were redefined (and it is rabbinic, not from the Torah, so this is possible), an egalitarian form of contract could be designed, and thus one block to homosexual marriage would be removed.  And, as she implied, many heterosexual couples would also prefer such a contract.

 


The Sunday presentation was the most detailed.  The Torah’s view of homosexuality is clear and extreme, as most clearly stated in Leviticus/Vayikra 20:13 (which repeats in more emphatic terms 18:22):

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them

 

Rabbi Cohen (who comes from a Reconstructionist family but received smicha from the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary) asked how modern Jews could retain their obedience to the halakha and their general view that homosexuality is a fact of life for homosexuals, not a deliberate choice of doing evil.  She offered several options:

 

 

Obviously, such a radical approach is used very cautiously and only when, in the words of the rabbis, it is necessary for the sake of heaven.  This is exactly the situation that, in the view of Rabbi Cohen, we face today with homosexuals, who presumably represent one-tenth of all Jews, and who are faced with impossible choices.  For the sake of increasing the number of Jews, and of Jewish children, and of the level of observance, it is time to uproot the law!

 

In a sentence, it was a great weekend.  If you wish to pursue these issues further, Rabbi Cohen provided us with a two-page bibliography. See also below.

 

David Steinberg and David Brooks

Spring 2004

 

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From United Synagogue Review

Spring 2004

Point

We Can’t Legitimate Homosexuality Halakhically
by Rabbi Joel Roth

Our Movement, led by the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, has been through a painful, divisive and difficult deliberation on the issue of the halakhic status of homosexuality in the not very distant past. I understand that many of my students, who think of a period of 12 years as half a lifetime, might feel that our deliberation was eons ago. But adults, who clearly understand that 12 years is a short time, and not a long time, must surely wonder why we are putting ourselves again through a process which will be no less divisive, painful, and contentious this time than it was the last time, and will probably show that the same differences of opinion that existed 12 years ago continue to exist. But, if we have determined to put ourselves through this torture again, then I, who was an active participant in the previous discussion must be prepared to be an active participant again this time, since, in my opinion, not only our conclusions but our manner of deliberation may have significant implications for the nature of our Movement, which is very important to me and about which I have some very strong feelings.

I offer you a premise which should be self-evidently true to those sitting in this room. The Conservative Movement is a halakhic movement, recognizing the halakhic system as binding and authoritative upon us, individually and collectively. If we are not that, we should close up shop and admit that our Movement has no claim to normative Jewish authenticity and, therefore, no good reason to exist. It is true that we are not Orthodox and that we understand the workings of the halakhic system somewhat differently, sometimes even radically differently than our Orthodox compatriots do, but that does not mean that halakhic innovations and changes can be justified simply by the affirmation that we are Conservative. The fact that a view is politically correct does not make it ipso facto halakhically correct. We recognize the legitimacy of innovation and change only when and if our decisions can be justified and defended from within the parameters of the halakhic system itself – and there are parameters.

I submitted a paper on the subject of homosexuality to the Law Committee when the issue was last on its agenda. It was approved by a greater number of votes than any other paper submitted to the Committee at that time. It was a long paper, and, I think by the admission of all, a very thorough paper. It is published, together with the other four papers also approved by the Committee at that time, in a volume entitled Responsa 1991-2000: The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Movement. Since there is no possible way for me to provide this afternoon the type of detailed halakhic analysis which I provided in that paper, I urge all who are interested in such an analysis to actually read the paper – as opposed to contenting themselves with a description of it offered by others. Let me, however, offer a few summary statements of the basic halakhic argument.

In point of fact, the two verses in the book of Leviticus (18:22 and 20:13) which deal with homosexuality are really quite clear, despite the efforts of some to call their clarity into question. Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 absolutely forbid homosexual between males. The Rabbis, in the Sifra (Aharei Mot 9:8), also understand the Torah to forbid lesbianism. The Torah’s prohibitions, let it be clear, are against actions, like male homosexual , not against fantasies or attractions. The Torah and the Rabbis do not distinguish between types of homosexuals in any way, and anyone who wishes to read such an interpretation into the Torah and the Talmud is duty bound to provide convincing and compelling proof that he or she is not reading into the text something which is not there at all, as a way of allowing the text to lead to a desired but, in fact, halakhically indefensible conclusion. The Rabbis were well able to conceive of monogamous and loving relationships between members of the same sex, and I quote in my paper the texts that prove this beyond reasonable question. But their words cannot possibly be read to imply that such monogamous or loving gay relationships are in a different halakhic category than any other relationships between members of the same sex. The prohibition is clear and total.

Since I have long affirmed that the halakhic process legitimately may, and often must, take new knowledge into account as a datum in the decision-making process, I devoted a major part of my paper to an extensive analysis of the following question: Would any of the currently regnant theories about the etiology of homosexuality be persuasive enough to warrant, let alone demand, that the uncontested, long-standing halakhic precedent concerning homosexuality be overturned? The etiological theories were then, and remain today, the psychoanalytical, the biochemical/hormonal, and the sociobiological/genetic. Upon analysis of each of the theories, I concluded that not only is each insufficiently proved to warrant overturning biblical and rabbinic precedent on its account, but that even if it were absolutely proved, the overturning of precedent would not be warranted, and that a moral God could reasonably be understood to have imposed the prohibition justly. I ask your allowance to state these conclusions without offering a brief statement of my arguments about each of the theories. I do so because I have long ago learned through personal experience and suffering that a brief summary of a very complex argument cannot possibly do justice to a nuanced claim, and is actually likely to result in its distortion.

I am, first and foremost, a halakhist. And, in the final analysis, it is halakhah which is determinative both for me personally and for the Conservative Movement. But I must take advantage of my presence before you to make a number of points that will put my halakhic conclusions in a perspective that it is critical to me be understood.

First, halakhic decision-making is not a totally objective undertaking. Indeed, the same, it seems to me, is true of decision- making within all legal systems. I am prepared not only to admit, but to affirm, that poskim regularly approach a question before them with a predisposition to wishing to find a specific answer. There is nothing wrong with having such a predisposition, and poskim need feel no guilt at having one. But what distinguishes a good poseik from a poor one, in my opinion, is his ability to be sufficiently dispassionate in his evaluation of his own argument to be able to discern whether his predisposition has blinded him to its indefensibility. I, as many of you know, have been heavily involved in two very public halakhic debates within our Movement. I refer, of course, to the ordination of women and to the status of gay Jews. In the former I was heralded as a hero by many, and in the latter I was demonized, especially, though not exclusively, by many gay Jews.

I affirm to you today that I undertook my research and analysis of both issues with a predisposition to say yes. What distinguishes my two decisions on these subjects is very simple: about the ordination of women I believe that there is good halakhic justification for change in established precedent, and about the status of homosexuality there is not. I saw, and continue to see, no way to say yes to the latter without so vitiating the texts of the tradition that to do so would undermine the integrity of the very legal system which stands as the unassailable foundation of our Movement. I say today that had I felt that way about the halakhic justification justification of the ordination of women, I would have said no to it; and, if either I or someone else finds a cogent defense of a change in the halakhic status of homosexuality, I would gladly say yes. At this moment, however, I cannot find it, nor do I think anyone else has found it.

Second, our Movement is full of Jews who regularly violate halakhah in all sorts of ways. The vast majority of our members do not observe Shabbat in accordance with even the most liberal legal rulings of the Law Committee. The vast majority do not come close to observing the laws of kashrut. Few perceive daily prayer as legal requirement that compels them. Many probably engage in business practices that halakhah might well frown upon. In none of these cases do I, or anyone else, ever say about these Jews that they are wicked or evil. Gay Jews who behave in certain ways also violate halakhah, but they are no more wicked or evil than are Sabbath desecrators and I do not perceive them any differently in that regard than I perceive Sabbath desecrators. I suspect that there are many who must believe that I could not possibly have even a working relationship with gay Jews, let alone a friendship and warm feelings. They are wrong, and absolutely so. I find it no more difficult to have a strong and warm relationship with a gay Jew than I do to have a similar relationship with a Jew who does not keep kosher or does not fulfill the laws of prayer.

Third, Jewish law is very different from American law in one critically important way. Halakhah is a religious legal system, purporting to reflect what God demands of the Jewish people; American law is secular, assiduously avoiding any claim whatsoever that its demands have or lack Divine sanction. As an American, I might legitimately claim that the law ought and can have nothing to say about my private and personal behavior with any other consenting adult. As a Jew, I cannot reasonably make a parallel claim about halakhah. It is untenable, virtually by definition, to claim that God cannot legitimately command me about matters which are private and personal, even with a consenting adult. Indeed, as Jews we know that God does command us about personal and private matters like the food we eat, the clothes we wear, and our sexual relations with our spouses.

From this critical distinction it follows that there is no inconsistency whatsoever in claiming that gay people in America must have all the same civil rights as all other Americans, on the one hand, and affirming that homosexual behavior is halakhically forbidden and ought not be engaged in, on the other. It is no different than affirming that eating treif carries with it no negative judgment from the perspective of a secular legal system, while it does from the perspective of halakhah. There seem to me to be many people who think that if one continues to affirm halakhic precedents about homosexuality, he or she cannot possibly believe that gay people deserve and are entitled to equal protection of the laws and full equality of civil rights within the secular legal system under which we live as Americans. Even more, whatever rights, privileges and honors we agree to allow within the Jewish community to Jews who violate other central elements of halakhah must be granted no less to gay Jews. Their violation of halakhah is not of a different or more severe nature than many of the halakhic violations which are, regrettably, so common among us Conservative Jews, nor, therefore, should their treatment by us as a Movement be any different.

Fourth, the unambiguous clarity of my halakhic stance has often led people to assume incorrectly my stance on some very important matters. Therefore, I wish to make several things as unambiguously clear as my halakhic stance is. Whatever the etiology of homosexuality might be, homosexuals do not make a conscious and knowing choice to be homosexuals. Indeed, most probably fight their own first conscious inklings that they are not heterosexual, and may do so for years, causing great personal anguish and torment. Halakhically committed gay Jews are called upon by the halakhic system to make a sacrifice far more demanding, difficult, and onerous than what is almost ever demanded of other Jews. The halakhic system, to the best of my ability to understand it, demands of gay Jews to be celibate, and that is a demand made only of agunot in addition to them. The halakhic system does not and cannot command gay Jews not to have homosexual attractions, but it does insist that they not act on these attractions.

Let nobody in this room think for one minute that I believe it is easy to comply with this demand. Halakhah also demands of heterosexual Jews that they restrict their sexual relations to their spouses, yet we exhibit understanding of the inability of many heterosexual Jews to wait until marriage to engage in sexual relations or even their inability to be forever loyal to their spouses when they are married. Halakhah does not condone these violations of its dictates, but we understand human frailty. If that is so for people who are not at all consigned to a life of celibacy, how much more so must we be understanding when the behavior of gay Jews does not live up to halakhic demands. They, after all, are consigned to a life of celibacy. If we praise the choice of heterosexual Jews to restrict their non-marital relations to monogamous relationships because we consider that a more moral choice than heterosexual promiscuity; so, too, must we praise the choice of homosexual Jews to restrict their relations to monogamous relationships because we consider that a more moral choice than homosexual promiscuity. But, in both cases, our praise of a more moral choice should be carefully worded and expressed lest it be misunderstood to imply halakhic acceptance, because it does not, in either case.

And, finally, I would like to say a word or two about treatment. It is the popular wisdom in the world that homosexuality cannot be successfully or even moderately successfully treated, and perhaps that is true. I do know that there are organizations and schools of therapy which claim to have at least some, and sometimes great, success. I don’t know where the truth lies, or whether there is only one possible truth about this matter, but this much I wish to say. It is yet within my not so distant memory that the western medical world rejected such types of treatment as acupuncture and herbal remedies, yet these are now part of the normal arsenal of medical treatments. I urge halakhically committed gay Jews not to reject the possibility that the severity of the halakhic demand of celibacy might be somewhat or significantly mitigated by some modes of therapy and treatment. Since the halakhic prohibition stands irrespective of whether there is treatment possible or not, there is little to be lost in giving a chance to treatment for which claims of marked success are made and attested.

I end with a double plea. I plead with gay Jews to recognize that an inability to legitimate homosexuality halakhically makes no negative claim whatsoever about the humanity, sanctity, worth, and dignity of homosexuals. And I plead with straight Jews to exhibit much greater understanding of the personal plight, especially the personal halakhic plight, of gay Jews, and to be ever mindful that an inability to legitimate homosexuality halakhically makes no negative claim whatsoever about the humanity, sanctity, worth, and dignity of homosexuals.

 

Rabbi Roth is Professor of Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

 

 

Counterpoint

Medical and Moral Reasons to Change the Law
by Rabbi Elliot Dorff

 

I am glad to be part of this conversation, but I do want to put it in context. I am very much in the middle of the Movement, and in some ways that is attested to by the fact that I’ve written about 15 t’shuvot for the Law Committee, and most of them have gotten overwhelming votes in favor. In a lot of the issues that we confront in the Conservative Movement, Rabbi Roth and I are very much on the same side. Truthfully, we share much more than we don’t. So the fact that we disagree about this particular issue should not be taken out of context.

The second piece of context is my own understanding of this entire issue, for after all is said and done, law does not exist in an isolated realm. It emerges out of the context of the particular lawmaker or the particular judge: that person’s background, that person’s experiences in life, that person’s values and hopes. And what happens in any legal system is that the people who are charged with interpreting it and applying it inevitably do so, not just on the basis of their intellectual deductions or inferences, but also on the basis of their “kishkas,” their social associations, and their biographies. So, consequently, there is one piece of my own biography that I think is important to understand here.

 

When I was growing up, I had no idea what the word “homosexual” meant. The first I ever heard about this whole issue was in 1961, when I was a freshman at Columbia and took the mandatory great books course. One of the books was Plato’s Symposium, in which Plato understands the homosexual relationship between a master and a student as being the culmination of their relationship. We tittered about that for two days, and then it was on to the next book. The next time that I even heard about this subject was in 1973. I was already in Los Angeles, and a friend of mine called me. He was then a rabbi in Cleveland. He told me that a young man in his congregation — who had become part of the Joint Program between the Seminary and Columbia — had come out as a gay man and had been shunned by the Seminary community, so he had transferred to UCLA. The rabbi wanted me to meet with him, simply to tell him that the Jewish community still cared.

 

I met with him for about three hours one day. Truthfully, all I knew about the subject was Leviticus. He really gave me an education as to what it was like to be a committed Jew and absolutely condemned, at least apparently, by the Torah itself and by the later Jewish tradition as well. I have to say that this was the first, and truthfully the only time, that I have been genuinely embarrassed by my tradition because it didn’t seem to me right that a good God, a moral God, would in some way or another create people who wanted to be traditional and, nevertheless, found themselves to be homosexual.

 

The next time I was involved in this issue was after the AIDS virus was identified in 1981. I do a lot of work in bioethics, and so I was on a task force at UCLA Medical Center in regard to AIDS. This ultimately got me involved in Nechama, the Los Angeles Jewish AIDS response. So my own interest in this issue really came over time and was a result of these modes of exposure to the issue. From the very beginning, I understood this as being a generational issue because I’ve noticed that my children had a very different experience about this. When they were in high school in the eighties and early nineties, they knew a number of people who were openly gay or lesbian, and being gay or lesbian was just not an issue. I can’t say that’s true for everybody in their generation, nor can I say that my view is contested by everybody in my generation, but I do think that part of this is generational.

 

Let me now move to law. We start with the verse in Leviticus: “A man shall not have sex with another man as a man has sex with a woman; it is an abomination.” The verse is not clear. “It is an abomination” sounds absolutely horrendous in English, as if it is by far the worst possible violation of the Torah that one can imagine. I need to tell you, though, that the Torah uses the exact same word for people who eat non-kosher meat. It uses the same word, also, for people who do not use honest weights and measures in business. So this particular prohibition is not singled out as being the only thing that merits that term. Also, the very thing it is prohibiting is itself not clear: “A man shall not have sex with a man as a man has sex with a woman.” How does a man have sex with a woman? My guess is that the vast majority of sex between men and women is vaginal. Men do not have vaginas. What does it mean then for a man not to have sex with another man as a man has sex with a woman? That is physically impossible. So the very thing the Torah meant to prohibit is itself not clear.

 

We, however, are Conservative Jews. We certainly believe that the Torah has a history and that Jewish law has a history, and we take that history very seriously. The fact of the matter is that the tradition understood all forms of male homosexuality to be prohibited. Even though the Torah itself mentions nothing about women, the tradition also includes a rabbinic prohibition in regard to lesbian sex. That has been the tradition on this until our own time.

 

In most other areas of the Torah, the Rabbis expanded what the Torah said, contracted what the Torah said, changed the form — and we are the recipients of a whole tradition of Rabbis trying to deal with what the Torah said. In this case, we do not have that. Part of the reason why this issue is so problematic for us as Conservative Jews — who take Jewish law seriously — is that we do not, in this case, have a long history of development regarding this law. Consequently, those of us who are interested in understanding the law differently are in the first generation of Jews who are testing this law, testing what its scope is and ought to be. Because of the very short legal history on this law, this is very close to what lawyers call “a matter of first impression.”

 

My own understanding is that we have both moral and medical reasons for changing the law. The medical reason is that AIDS is still lethal. The cocktail of drugs that was discovered for it in 1996 only works for about half of AIDS patients, and we are finding out that many of those patients who have returned virtually to full health as a result of these drugs are now developing strains of the disease that are resistant to the drugs. In addition to that, there are many other sexually transmitted diseases. We are given medical mandates by our tradition to take care of our bodies and to help other people take care of theirs. With all of modern medicine, for all of the sexually transmitted diseases, the most effective way to avoid them is either to have no sex at all or restrict oneself to monogamous sex. Consequently, we have a very clear interest in trying to get gays and lesbians within our community to be monogamous.

 

How do you do that? To tell them “Have no sex whatsoever” is just going to be seen as impossible. It is one of the problems we have with what we say to heterosexuals about their sexual activity as well. What do you say to unmarried heterosexuals? If you say “Don’t do anything,” I can guarantee you that Jewish tradition will become completely irrelevant to people from puberty until they get married. So what we need to say is that Jewish tradition has the ideal of not having sex until you’re married, but if you’re not going to be able to attain that ideal, then understand that Judaism is not an all-or-nothing kind of thing, in sex or in anything else for that matter. What that means is that the Jewish values and laws that govern sex should, to the extent that they can, be observed by unmarried people having sex.

The same thing is true for gays and lesbians; namely, that the hormones “do their thing” at more or less the same ages as they do in heterosexuals, and in one way or another, they will, for most people, be expressed in some sort of sexual activity. So we have a medical reason to get them to be monogamous.

 

We also have a moral reason — the same reason we have to convince heterosexuals to be monogamous. Why is the tradition interested in that? In monogamy, we get people to take responsibility for one another. After all is said and done, marriage is not just a license to have sex together with a given person. It is also an announcement before family and friends that you are going to take responsibility for each other. That is the moral piece of it. In part, that is expressed in the ketubah. I think everybody understands that when they get married in front of family and friends, this is not going to be just a series of sex acts together. It is also living life together, sharing its joys and the pains as well as the ongoing, regular moments of life, and growing old together And how do we get people to do that? Partly through the ceremony of marriage. That does not guarantee that there will not be adultery. But it does lead to the probability that they will be faithful, because they have announced this commitment to each other in front of family and friends.

 

If we do not do the same sort of thing for gays and lesbians, then we heterosexuals are being duplicitous, because what we are saying is, “We will not give you the authorization to have a commitment ceremony, or whatever you call it; we will not give you that kind of public affirmation; and then we will look down our noses at you if you are promiscuous.” My position also involves a number of humrot, a number of stringencies, in that I would then expect gays and lesbians not to be promiscuous. I would, in fact, expect them to be monogamous, and I would expect them to conduct their sexual lives under the same Jewish norms that we expect heterosexual Jews to, including procreation. I would hope that lesbians either get artificially inseminated or adopt children and raise them. I would hope that gay men either adopt children or use surrogate mothers to have children and that, frankly, they help us with our demographic crisis as Jews.

 

Until now, the science has been very soft on all of this. That is, we have not really known what leads to sexual orientation to begin with, for either heterosexuals or for homosexuals. What is clear is that in 1973 already, based upon clinical evidence, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Association of Social Workers all maintained that it was not necessary, or for that matter even desirable, to try to change a gay person into a straight person. That kind of intervention was not successful and, aside from that, led to even more problems — in many cases, unfortunately, suicide. Already in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association took homosexuality out of the DSM, the manual of mental diseases. Some maintain that this decision was politically rather than scientifically motivated. Whether that is true or not is open to question. Eighteen years later, however, when the American Psychiatric Association reaffirmed its position in 1991 based on yet more clinical evidence, clearly the science was motivating its stance. That position, though, was based solely on clinical evidence of what, in fact, works and what does not work in the treatment of people who come to them for some kind of intervention.

 

Just last week (October 21), a report came out of  UCLA that may be the beginning of some hard scientific evidence about how we develop sexual identity. It stated: “Refuting 30 years of scientific theory that solely credits hormones for brain development, UCLA scientists have identified 54 genes that may explain the different organization of male and female brains… Published in the October edition of the journal Molecular Brain Research, the UCLA discovery suggests that sexual identity is hard-wired into the brain before birth and may offer physicians a tool for gender assignment of babies born with ambiguous genitalia….Sexual identity is rooted in every person’s biology before birth and springs from a variation in our individual genome.” This is all very new. You need to know that the science is just developing, but it appears that what scientists expected all along — namely that there was some genetic base to who we are, as we are — is true.

 

A prohibition only makes sense if the person to whom it is addressed can do it. What we are finding out is that choice does not really exist. You can say to gays and lesbians, do not have sex ever, which is logically, at least, a choice — but I think that is very cruel. It means that from the point of view of Jewish tradition, gays and lesbians could never in their lives have legitimate sex. I think that is both cruel and, in many ways, un-Jewish, because Jewish tradition did not tell us to completely suppress our sexual urges. Jewish tradition said that what we are supposed to do is channel our sexual desires into legitimate modes of expression.

 

It seems to me that what we now know about the etiology of sexuality is enough to say that what we need to do is to understand the verses about homosexuality in Leviticus and the rest of their sparse legal history in a very lawyerly way. That is, what did the Rabbis do? The Rabbis expanded the scope of various requirements and prohibitions in the Torah. They narrowed some to the point of extinction, like capital punishment. They themselves say that if a court issues a capital verdict once in seven years, then that is a bloody court. On the other hand, they expanded things like Shabbat to the extent that they say it is like a mountain hanging on a hair because there is a lot of rabbinic legislation and very little biblical legislation.

 

I would simply affirm Leviticus but understand it as referring to cultic sex — which, judging by its context in the Holiness Code, may be what it was talking about to begin with — as well as to promiscuous sex and oppressive sex. I think those three forms of sex are indeed abominations, whether they are referring to homosexuals or heterosexuals. But consensual, monogamous sex by adults I would want to sanctify in some sort of commitment ceremony.

Rabbi Dorff is rector of the University of Judaism