Conservative Jews
Maintain Anti-Gay Policy
by AP from the Web,
June 10, 2005
New York City, June 9 --
Conservative Judaism's Rabbinical Assembly has announced that a key panel has
"upheld the biblical injunction against homosexual behavior" -- at least for
now.
The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which sets policy on application of
halakha (Jewish law), kept in place a 1992 ruling against both ordination of
openly gay rabbis and commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples.
The statement said committee members are divided and that their "lively debate"
will continue over coming months. The committee, which has discussed the
gay issue for two years, met last week near Baltimore.
The committee acknowledged that "for a variety of reasons, the Jewish ideal of
heterosexual marriage is unrealistic for many Jews." Panel members said
they "emphatically recognize the human dignity" of such Jews and urged
synagogues and schools to be "inclusive and welcoming of all Jews regardless of
their marital status or sexual orientation." Similar language was part of
the 1992 ruling.
The leading Conservative educator, Chancellor Ismar Schorsch of Jewish
Theological Seminary, has warned that gay rabbis would be a major break from
Jewish law. But Rector Elliott Dorff of the University of Judaism, the law
committee's vice chairman, takes a liberal stance.
The law committee consists of 25 rabbis and six nonvoting members who are not
rabbis. Its chairman is Rabbi Kassel Abelson of Beth El Synagogue in
Minneapolis.
Reform Judaism, the largest group of Jews in America, allows gay rabbis as does
the much smaller Reconstructionist movement.
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