Opinion Sur Joven

Religions interpret the Bible according to their understanding of the cosmos. Even though the Christian and the Jewish share most of the original texts (we both have the same Bible), there are some traditions interpreted literally, and others which are interpreted metaphorically, mystically, and so on. The fact that both religions don’t share the same practices is connected with this interpretation of the Bible, even when we are reading the same text.

An example of this is circumcision. The Jewish understand it as the pact between God and Abraham that was seal through the act of circumcision, which is the removal of the baby’s foreskin. On the other hand, Christians believe that it is something that should occur not in the flesh but in the soul. The same text read in a different way. They are both valid, none of them incorrect, even if the literal interpretation fades away.

However, this diversity in reading and interpretation turns into a common belief when it is about the prohibition of homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22). That is to say, the diversity turns into a literal reading in almost every religion when interpreting this passage. Today, most religions condemned homosexuality and see it as sinful. Religions’ normative systems have an implicit or explicit selectivity when choosing which transgressions to persecute, and homosexuality has always been a top priority on their lists. Sexual intercourse between men is as prohibited in Judaism as eating a ham and cheese sandwich; this according to the text, but as to social punishment and collective imagination, homosexuality was considered a more serious transgression than alimentary rules.

To summarize, (a) homosexuality is literally interpreted by almost every religion, which does not happen with the rest of the prohibitions and precepts (b) Religious condemns to transgressions to other biblical commands are not as serious as homosexuality. This condemnation is unbalanced and has no basis on the text, but in the sociologic reality of the interpreters. This idea is central if we want to understand their positions on persecution and punishment, as well as those supporting and encouraging free sexuality within the religious field. Religious individuals often excuse themselves by arguing that “the text is clear and unequivocal.” However, many other times, when the text is undoubtedly undisputable, biblical experts have given it an opposite meaning to that clearly expressed in the texts. Opposed to popular belief, the baseline is not the biblical criticism affirmation that establishes the non-divinity of the text but the search through faith of a sense that allows us to continue reading the text as divine. Here is an example: Pentateuch (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) teaches us that if a man has a rebellious son, who does not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, they will take him to the elders of his city, and if the elders find him guilty “all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die.” Two thousand years before biblical critics from modern Germany said that the Bible had no divine origin, Mishna wise men (that in keeping with the contemporary Bible readings of Jesus and his disciples when funding the first churches of the early Christianity) decided that they should interpret that law in a way that allows them to consider it as the living voice of God. And after long debates, they concluded that the text should be read as a challenge to human capacity of interpreting the biblical text, and not only highlighting what is evident.

The same was done later with death penalty in general. Talmudic rabbis concluded that even when the death penalty is mentioned many times in the text, is virtually not applicable because of the restrictions they’ve made up to prevent the death penalty. The text was interpreted according to the social values of the time, which sought to affirm that it is the voice of a God that loves its creatures.

This way of interpreting the texts is based on the idea that there are governing principles that ought to condition interpretations. Simeon ben Azai made one of the most important interpretations of those principles, and stated that the Bible’s golden rule is “This is the written account of Adam’s line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.” (Genesis 5:1). This biblical verse tells us one of the deepest truths: every human being is a divine creation, made in the likeness of God.

However, the governing idea when interpreting not the texts but the world is that we are all (Jewish, Christians, Argentineans, Chinese, Bolivians, Palestinians, Parisians, Vietnamese, Zulus, the handicapped, the highly-gifted, the entrepreneurs, the taxi-drivers, the blondes, the colored, the cooks, men, women, the elders, gays, the heterosexuals, homophobic, and so on) made in the likeness of God; then, the way of relating to each other should be based on this idea.

If the human being equality and the divine origin of that equality are undoubtedly a truth of faith inherent to the text, then homophobia is a serious transgression.

Judaism prohibited homosexuality thousands of years ago. However, this prohibition has been accompanied by the ignorance in relation to same-sex couples. As humanity had not always understood the right of a father to stone his son, it took even more time getting to know that physical punishment will not make children understand something that it will take longer to explain. In the same way that it hasn’t understood that homosexuality is neither a disease, nor an election. Neither can it be healed, nor modified. Any attempt to get rid of it would only repress a human feeling that has no moral burden.

There is a misconception that states homosexuality is immoral, because it is opposed to “natural” and “moral”. Regarding morality, the burden of proof is on the person who wants to define an action as immoral. I have never heard a convincing explanation of what is wrong with love between people of the same sex. Those statements are usually based on the idea that homosexuality is opposed to family, which is the core cell of the society. But, in my opinion, this can be interpreted in an opposite sense. It is homophobia that attacks family when imposing a unique family model that leaves new structures aside.

The natural conception is even more complex. It’s hard for me to understand the meaning of natural in this context. Yet, if I accept that the world was created with a purpose and certain rules, I am not able to say what is included in those rules and what is not. I think that the natural in the world should not be preserved, but subverted. Culture is a conquest over the natural, and religions, in that sense, are not natural, but a cultural phenomenon that challenges mankind to exceed its selfish, ambitious and predatory nature in an attempt to turn to a cultural and social being that exceeds its own nature and recreates itself. Maybe love between same-sex persons is not natural, but it is as unnatural as going to church every Sunday, eating kosher, fasting on Forgiveness Day, practicing celibacy or monogamy or giving to the poor.

The history of mankind has always been threatened by people who saw the natural “normality” only in a few. Usually, that “normality” matches the characteristics of those who define it. Today, Jews or black people are considered as “normal” by our diverse society, but 50 years ago they were not. In the last century, American society was as convinced of the natural inferiority of black people as homophobes are towards gays and lesbians today. They are only subjective appreciations disguised as universal and eternal truths.

This is why when I chose to be a rabbi I favored not only to inclusion in religious activities but also to the promotion of gays and lesbians’ rights. As the leader of a nation that painfully and clearly remembers a persecution by people who thought themselves to be normal, I understand the work in favor of that minority as a duty, not as an option. Elie Wiesel, who survived the Shoah, teaches that the Holocaust should make us understand that indifference and complicity are almost synonyms. This is the reason for our struggle to create a more fair and tolerant society, where no one will have to hide for fear of discrimination or intolerance, even by those who love them.

Working with Argentine Jewish Gays Judíos Argentinos Gays (JAG) showed me wonderful people of faith, from every religion, who still have faith, despite the religious institutions that govern, marginalize and persecute them. Educational spaces, inter-religious dialogue and shared reflection (Jews and Christians together) have helped me understand the power of a faith movement within different religions that silently and firmly is paving the path towards a new kind of relationship with gays and lesbians. Some of them are conditioned by hierarchies and obedience structures, and in other cases with more freedom of speech, but in all cases moved by a feeling of deep love, which is more powerful than any cultural or religious gap between them.

Religion has always been a powerful tool to change the world; either to hurt and corrode it, or to change it in an attempt to redeem it and make it free. The greatest repressions and persecutions in history as well as liberations have always had religious men within their leaders. It’s high time to balance society’s attitudes towards gays and lesbians. Religions and religious people persecute and discriminate those who choose a different sexual life.

Maybe it’s time for those religious leaders, moved by faith in human being equality as the son of God and in beauty as a divine sign, to start working for those who still believe that God loves and support them no matter the sex of the person they sleep with.