April 11, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
Watch this (the video is better than the article, and surprisingly neutral given that it’s from Fox):
April 11, 2013: “Missouri Man Arrested for Refusing to Leave Gay Partner”
<Rabbi swearing>
In case you were wondering why we need marriage equality. Everywhere. All the time. Across state lines.
April 10, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
Quite an inspirational evening tonight, with “the usual suspects” from the local interfaith community: The Interfaith Alliance annual awards dinner. My parents were there and I took it as an opportunity to honor them for raising me with justice, respect, and equality in my genes, as my mother more or less put it.
I had to introduce J to folks. And I tripped over it. “And this is my par… wife.” Wife, as in, we are married according to the state of New York. I’m still finding out what that means. And it does not come naturally to my tongue!
Younger GLBTQ people and allies of all ages have been according the honorifics (are they? are they only titles? I’ll have to think about that) “husband” and “wife” to same-sex partners for a while. But now I wonder: Are we going to have to stop doing that? Are we going to have to reserve “husband” and “wife” for people who have gone through the legal commitment? I think so.
One of the biggest differences in being legally married is that same-sex couples have always stayed together just because we were committed to each other. As we gained recognition and support from our families and communities, that helped make it happen; but it was still a matter of personal commitment. (Except for the two of us; we have a rule that whoever leaves has to take the children. That insures a lasting relationship!!!!)
Now, gay and lesbian couples who are married, legally, cannot just dissolve their relationships by choice. There is an entire legal process that has to be gone through. If our marriage ends, we have to explain it not only to people we know, but strangers. How odd. How normal. But how entirely unexpected in my lifetime.
It has never occurred to me to talk to couples about how being married would be different from living together. I didn’t know. I don’t think I believed it, even though I heard people say it; and maybe that’s because being married, in that sense, was simply not an option for me, and yet I thought of my marriage and my family as as real as any other. Now, after 13 years during which we have been living together and raising a family, we are married in a new way, and I suspect I will keep being delightfully surprised as I find out what it’s all about.
I’m going to have to practice saying, “And this is my wife.”
April 8, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, Farming, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
The Spring peepers are out. I thought I heard them when we got home last night but it’s definite.
I’ve been saying for a month or more that it’s Spring. Non-farmers don’t see it. 4 weeks ago, the boys (goats) were shedding. Just a little bit of their winter under-coat, but enough: if they’re shedding, it’s Spring. I mentioned it to the farmer across the road when he delivered 4 big round bales of hay, and he said, “Yeah, the horse is shedding too.”
Changes your whole perspective on things, because the animals don’t lie: Why would their bodies shed unless Spring was on its way? So all the snowstorms, all the rain, all the wind, all the freezing cold — folks, that is what Spring is like in upstate NY. (Not my line originally, but part of the reason I’m a good rabbi is that I steal the best practices of others (words, rituals, programs) and make them my own.)
I know it was 4 weeks ago, because I just put down the 4th of those bales for the girls and I’d planned it so that I wouldn’t have to be dealing with small bales over this weekend. Had to feed some small square bales last week to make that work; fortunately he still has some of those. These are the last of the round bales, though, and we’ll be bringing at least another couple of loads of those small square bales over in the truck. Not enough growth in the pasture to sustain them yet, plus I suspect it’s not good for the pasture to be cropped too closely quite this early. I’ll have to check the hayfield, which I can let them into via my electronet fencing. If I didn’t wax eloquent last summer about it here it’s because I was too busy using it.
So the Spring peepers are out and Corona Borealis is up in the sky, bright as you please. And why am I up and out and loving life and the world in the middle of the night? Youngest Daughter came whispering by my bed, “I’m awake and my belly hurts.” I’m the mama with the Eema-ears: I wake up to the slightest child sound.
I knew what it was. Fortunately the van is packed with finger food and my dearest childhood friend gave me a bottle of ginger ale for the ride home last night after I dropped her off, but I hadn’t drunk it. So down I went, and back I came with a plate of plain tortilla chips and some grapes and a tractor-shaped matza-meal shortbread cookie that says “D & J” on it. She had a little of the ginger ale and ate some chips, told me she “couldn’t eat those,” pointing to the grapes, and then announced she was done. Perfect. When her arm was broken 3 weeks ago, our dear friend came to the hospital with food and snagged some ginger ale from the stash in the Emergency Room, so I knew that it was a good choice, and besides my mother taught me that bubbles settle the stomach and I know that ginger does.
I guessed that the hurting belly probably stemmed from not eating enough yesterday. Our wedding was at 11am, followed by a cake and pie reception. We had a small gathering in the afternoon but I think the kids were outside most of the time, at least after they had roamed all over the borrowed house looking for the elevator. (Not a car elevator, though.) They often don’t eat at parties, which I don’t get; I suppose they’ll grow into it.
So the Spring peepers are out and Corona Borealis is up in the sky, and I am a legally married woman in the states of New York and New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Maryland, Iowa, Washington, and the District of Columbia. Our rabbi listed all ten of those yesterday, and when she and her cantor partner (at whose big Jewish wedding I co-officiated) turned to each other and simultaneously announced, “By the power vested in me by the State of New York, we now pronounce you MARRIED!” the synagogue erupted with cheers and clapping.
“Cantor ‘partner’” — that’s a habit I’m going to have to break. Lesbians and gay men used to use that word after we realized that straight people probably heard too much emphasis on sex in “lover,” which was itself an improvement over the entirely euphemistic “friend.” Same “sex” problem with the word “homosexual” — the whole falling-in-love part was eclipsed. Then it became obvious that “partner” was too ambiguous — business partner? — and some of us began to use “life-partner.” Longtime companion. As lesbians and gay men began to have weddings, “spouse.” Not that the weddings were recognized legally in any way, by anyone; but it didn’t matter. We hadn’t expected that anyhow; it was the overwhelming experience of naming our love and commitment out loud and being affirmed by friends, and increasingly, family and community, that mattered.
When Marriage Equality was passed by the State of New York two summers ago, I spent the weeks leading up to the vote very involved in on-line discussions about its importance, particularly with gay folks who didn’t get it. On the one side, I think of a gay Conservative who was really clear that he didn’t need or want this; on the other side, an activist lesbian who felt there were far more important issues to put one’s time and energy into. I seem to have conducted most of these conversations on Facebook, so I can’t direct you to a blog post from that time. Suffice it to say that when Marriage Equality passed, I was VERY clear about many of the responsibilities and privileges that could now accrue to me and my spouse. I wondered, seriously, “Am I ready for this??”
If you’re much younger than 50 in 2013, as I am, this probably makes no sense to you. If you’re in your 20s or older, though, please understand: When you were born, it felt risky and dangerous to hold hands in public. When I came out in 1984, it was still mostly “The love that dare not speak its name.” (See the poem from which this line comes.) I — we — have made a life, a marriage, a family, that feel as real to me as I could imagine, and are accepted as such by family, friends, and community, pretty much everyone I ever encounter, all without legal sanction — other than the Civil Union in Vermont which meant nothing the minute we had left for our honeymoon in New Hampshire, 12-plus years ago. I truly never expected anything more in my lifetime.
People half a generation younger than me have been referring to my partner for some time as my “wife.” And it just didn’t sit right. In my mind, a wife is attached to a husband. And there’s no husband here. In fact I remember using that, shortly after I first started wearing a wedding ring in the 1990s. (First wedding. Yes, we have divorces too.) I was in a situation where I did not want to come out: First class as a teacher of a course for adult Jews. It wasn’t their business, might have been distracting, might have prejudiced them against me. (Might not have, but no way to know.) So when someone saw my ring and asked about my husband, I said — honestly but duplicitously — “There’s no husband attached to this ring.” Left them confused but I hadn’t lied, and that has always mattered a great deal to me, both as a rabbi and as a woman who wanted not to deny her life-partner’s existence.
Side note: I just got a call a couple days ago that asked for “Mr. W.” “There’s no Mr. W here,” said I. I don’t know who they were looking for, but they hung up immediately, leaving me wondering if they actually wanted to talk to Ms. W but just didn’t know it. Oh well. If it’s important they’ll call back.
I used the word “wedding” — it’s a gerund describing the uniting of two people in a marriage ceremony, and if you saw any of the gay or lesbian weddings I’ve been in or done you’d know it was a marriage ceremony. I accept that halakhically it’s outside the bounds of kiddushin but no longer make that distinction for myself; kedushah, holiness, inheres in my relationship as much as any committed, loving partnership.
For several years I — gently, I hope — expressed my preference with my younger gay and lesbian colleagues and friends, and with straight allies and friends who wanted to make it clear that they supported equality: “I don’t use that word.”
But as marriage equality took off, and it wasn’t just Civil Unions in Vermont, and then it wasn’t just Massachusetts and Quebec. And I stopped correcting people, even though “wife” didn’t sit easily and I didn’t use it myself even in my mind.
And in the last week or so, as wedding preparations continued apace, I started to realize that I would probably begin using the word “wife” after this wedding. Because it’s a status legally granted, and it means something — in fact, it means exactly the same thing it always has meant. A married woman. I jokingly called her “Mrs. W” last night. But I just realized, I could be “Mrs. Gordon” if I wanted to. And that means something now, something it never did before.
So the Spring peepers are out and Corona Borealis is up; and I’m something I never in my wildest dreams imagined: I’m a wife.
April 2, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
A colleague just posted this on Facebook, from HuffPost. Jessica Gerson writes:
The reason I call you a bigot, and the reason that we cannot politely agree to disagree, is that you are trying to make me, my life and my family subject to your opinion and/or religious belief….
If marriage equality becomes the law of the land, you still get to go home to your wife/husband and children, just the same way you could the previous day. Your life will not be negatively affected in any way. But if the reverse happens, I don’t get to go home to a legally protected family. The outcome of this battle affects me in a personal, immediate and lasting way. You have no real skin in this game. Marriage equality will not harm you. Marriage inequality does harm me. You fight against something that has no direct effect on your life and has considerable effect upon mine.
This is good. But it also misses the crux of the religious right’s anti-homosexuality argument.
The argument, of course, is that some behavior is morally wrong. I have read and heard folks who say that it is painful to see the country (state, municipality, neighborhood, neighbor, loved one) whom they deeply love and care for headed in a morally wrong direction. And it makes sense that 1) if you believe that Evil is active in the world and trying to ensnare whomever it can, for its own nefarious reasons, and 2) you read certain behaviors as indicating that a person (neighborhood, municipality, state, country) has lost their moral bearings and that their soul (literal or metaphorical) is in danger of being ensnared, then 3) you certainly can’t allow those behaviors to have the imprimatur of legality.
But that’s a religious argument, and we don’t all share that belief. I don’t believe that Evil is personified and out to get us. Real, yes. But evil and good are moral judgment calls that we humans have to make as well as we can. We can look for guidance from many places, including our traditions and scriptures; but in case fundamentalists haven’t noticed, our religious traditions and scriptures strongly disagree on many points. Including what constitutes immoral behavior.
I think most of us would agree that there’s some behavior that should be outlawed. (I said “most.” Don’t bring me Ayn Rand arguments; even that small minority is allowed for in my phrasing.) But the reasons we can agree that, say, murder and theft should be outlawed is that they are things that most of us would find harmful to ourselves if they were done to us.
Side note: One of the reasons that it’s so hard to legislate around mind-altering substances is that the initial harm is done to the person doing the action. Think cigarettes and marijuana. It gets easier to legislate when others are hurt (drunk driving). We have pretty well agreed that under certain circumstances, people aren’t ready to give their consent to be involved in behavior that they may later understand as harmful to themselves (child prostitution).
None of that applies to gay relationships or families. The only harm that is done is when it is illegal or considered shameful, and therefore driven into hiding. Our existence harms no one, other than perhaps their sensibilities. Protecting our families protects the next generation, just as it does with straight families.
If you want to say, “Well, if families can come in any size or shape, what’s to prevent polygamy?”
Two answers. 1: Nothing. I don’t approve , and couldn’t possibly officiate at a polygamous wedding — but it’s going on right now without my approval, and it’s not harming me or my family.
2: Polygamy — the practice of one man taking many wives and having as many children as humanly possible with them — can result in horrendous living conditions for some of the women and children involved. From what I have read, there’s a real likelihood of such a community being “essence of patriarchy” where Papa and Eldest Son(s) make the decisions for everybody, and there does seem to be a correlation between polygamy, child marriage, rape, and so on. If so, then people involved in it are experiencing harm, and for children their involvement is without their consent; there’s reason to prevent it.
I know of no large-scale polyandry in this country; as I said above, I may not approve of a relationship between one woman and two men, and I certainly couldn’t officiate at a polyandrous wedding — but it’s going on right now without my approval, and it’s not harming me or my family.
Ditto bestiality or any of the other nonsense that folks drag up to say, “If we permit this, where will it end?!” It’s already going on. I don’t like it, I don’t think it’s healthy, and I won’t be a part of it — but for goodness sakes, I don’t have time to regulate your life, if it’s not affecting others negatively. I can barely keep up with my own. If there starts to be an agitation for the right to marry one’s cat, then we’ll have to figure out whether that relationship means anything when you hold it up next to a marriage license. And it’ll be pretty easy to say “No.” The cat cannot be my health care proxy. The cat cannot jointly own property with me. The cat is not a human being and, Douglas Adams to the contrary, we do reserve certain privileges for ourselves as being a particular kind of sentient species.
So Jessica Gerson’s blog post is good, and well-written, and I agree with her wholeheartedly. But it won’t change minds because it’s not making the relevant argument. The relevant argument is,
“I’m sorry, you don’t actually know precisely what God wants. I know you think you do. I know you’ve been told that you do, and you’ve been told that the people doing the telling also know precisely what God wants, maybe even better than you do.
“Well, I’m here to tell you that you do NOT know precisely what God wants. It’s arrogant to say that you do, and even moreso to say that I do not. I have my own ideas of what God wants, and it starts with ‘Love one another. Be patient. Be kind.’ (Recognize the paraphrase of I Corinthians 13? Not even my scripture, but I agree with it in this context.)
“Here, let me quote it in its entirety:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“You don’t have to agree that what I’m doing is in accordance with what God wants, as I believe it is. You don’t have to agree that God rejoices in my marriage, my love, and my family, as much as in yours, as I do believe. But since my beliefs are founded just as fundamentally as yours on my understanding of all that is true, right, and holy, you have no argument that will justify your imposing sanctions on my life because of your belief that how I live is inherently evil.
“No one is harmed by my life. No one will be harmed by my marriage this weekend. No one will be harmed if the Supreme Court, please God, decides that my spouse and I can file a joint tax return.”
That is the crux of the argument: Is who I am and how I live inherently evil? We cannot agree on that, therefore we cannot legislate on that basis. Therefore we have to find a different way to decide whether it should be outlawed or not. Since it harms no one — even the American Academy of Pediatrics finally agrees on that one — then there’s no basis on which to outlaw it.
And since denying me and my partner a marriage license harms us and our children, there’s an affirmative need to redress that inequality.
Our marriage ceremony this weekend will be our second. Our first was 12 and a half years ago, in Vermont; we couldn’t celebrate with our community, unless they had rented a bus, which we highly discouraged! So it’s wonderful to have the opportunity to celebrate with them.
But the main reason for this marriage ceremony is to correct an oversight on the part of New York State: The fact that there was at that time no marriage license available for us. It was THRILLING to go to our Town Clerk last week and pay the $40, sign the paperwork, and be wished “Congratulations” by the Town officials we’ve come to know for other legal and local matters.
God willing, we won’t need most of the rights afforded married couples, since most seem to be “in case of disaster.” But next year, we will only have to file ONE set of New York taxes, and who knows? Maybe we will even be able to file a joint 1040.
November 9, 2006 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2006, blog, Israel/Palestine, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
It’s appalling. Jerusalem is rioting. No, parts of Jerusalem and other ultra-Orthodox enclaves are rioting. Why? Because the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, which is actually called “The Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance,” will take place on November 10, 2006.
(Why didn’t I know about this? Where have I been the last week? Caring for 48 chickens — Gimpy didn’t make it — and welcoming a third foster child. Then we constructed a temporary chicken pen and moved the chickens to the barn, in time for the arrival of a new foster cat. Two vehicles were disabled over the weekend, and we celebrated the congregation’s 140th anniversary on Sunday — see previous posting, which was published last Saturday in the “real” Times-Union, and has been getting quite some good feedback. Did I mention that the dog is sick? So I haven’t looked at the news in days, other than to see who won the elections. But for some reason I looked at the “Pride in the Pulpit” newsletter and the top action item was “Urgent Action Needed in Support of Gay Rights in Israel” or something like that. In my experience, politically left-wing organizations rarely support Israel, so I wanted to find out what was going on. I suppose this could be considered Israel-bashing, but at least it’s supporting Israeli citizens.)
It’s not that there’s never been a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem before. I’m sure the first-ever Israeli Gay Pride parade was in Tel Aviv, which is far more secular than Jerusalem. But the Jerusalem Open House, the GLBT center in Jerusalem, has been there for nine years, and there’s been a Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem for the past few years.
The organizers even assure everyone that “the parade will have a Jerusalem character — nothing sexual or provocative” — a.k.a. family-friendly. (Which is also becoming an issue in the gay community around Gay Pride parades!) But apparently that’s not enough. Clearly, our very existence is provocative, and what it’s provoking is ugly. Awful. Amazing. Terrible. Look at Ynet’s site for a lot of info about the march and the violent opposition, and here’s the daily paper Haaretz. The latest news is that in the wake of the Gaza shelling (note: shelling civilians is NOT OK — neither is firing rockets at civilians), the parade has been turned into a rally in the Hebrew University stadium, due to more generalized security concerns.
It’s telling that the Orthodox rabbis who agreed to this compromise did so on condition that no gay-friendly signs, symbols, etc. be visible outside the stadium. This is the “lenient” position: We’re ok, or at least tolerable, if we stay hidden. Publicly noticing, much less celebrating, men who fall in love with men, or women who fall in love with women, isn’t ok. Are they worried that their children will get the “wrong idea”? Do they think that just anybody can fall in love with their own gender? If they would realize that this is basically not a “choice” for most people, maybe they wouldn’t be so scared. (See Trembling Before G-d — amazing movie. Look especially under “reactions.”)
Actually, I assume that the people (men? are they all men?) who are organizing and threatening and carrying out violence are not thinking about love at all. They’re thinking about sex and they don’t realize (care? believe) that we love.
Look at this article , in which a religious Jerusalemite explains that a loving relationship is permitted by halachah, although certain sexual acts are not; on the other hand, he points out, arson, attempted murder, speaking ill of another, destroying public property and endangering life and limb are forbidden by halachah. HeLLO … Actually, I have no proof that this article was written by who it says it was, but I hope there is such a religious man, heterosexual himself, who will march in support. The argument stands either way.
It’s the same argument that finally broke the stalemate when I was in Jerusalem almost 3 years ago and a young Orthodox man from Brooklyn, young enough to be my son, was chastizing me for wearing a kippah. Seeing a woman in a kippah in “his” home, in Jerusalem, he said, was like seeing a woman wearing a skimpy bathing suit walking down the street; he was offended by it, and thought I should show respect for the Jews who live in Israel (like him) by not doing it. I made the mistake of engaging in dialogue with him. The argument continued for a long time, probably more than half an hour, until another young woman, also clearly observant, took him to task. “Is this the way your Rabbi taught you to give mussar?” she asked. “By humiliating another Jew in public?”
And this is the essence of what’s happening, I think. There can be an arrogance when you know that you’ve got it right. You’ve got the secret code, the secret handshake, you know what God wants and you’re doing it … and “those others” (like me) are not, and you have the right to correct them however you choose. Which arrogance often leads to bad behavior. And this bad behavior, whether violence to achieve your ends or embarrassing a “guest” in your “home,” is not condoned by traditional Judaism. (Any more than it is by Islam, for that matter. Or, probably, most religions.)
Read what MK Yossi Beilin says: “After all, the abomination of a city where residents are killing and wounding other residents just because of hatred and racism is immeasurably larger than the abomination of a city whose residents are marching and supporting their right to live in accordance with their sexual orientation.” Amen!
He also makes it clear that this parade has been held for several years in Jerusalem already. Mah nishtanah ha-shanah ha-zot mi-kol ha-shanim? Why is this year different from all other years? Is it because of the Gaza pullout? The horror of the war in the summer? Is the haredi (“fervently Orthodox”) community especially traumatized?
The march is being held on the day associated with the commemoration of Kristallnacht. Of course that matters too, and probably sets off fearful echoes in the ultra-Orthodox community. Though they came for gay men and lesbians in Germany along with and in some cases before they came for the Jews…
And consider this. The Women of the Wall (or see here) have been trying to hold services near the Western Wall for years. They have been trying to wear tallit and kippah and read Torah. And they have been subjected to vicious and violent harrassment by some Orthodox men and some Orthodox women. And basically, they’ve been told by the police that they’re the problem, that if they wouldn’t try to do things that offended the Orthodox Jews who seem to “own” the place, then they wouldn’t be subject to this harrassment. In the end (2003), that is the exact position upheld by the Israeli Supreme Court — despite their having ruled in the women’s favor in an earlier decision.
We call this blaming the victim.
And if we buy the argument, then the holiest of Jewish places becomes the exclusive property of the people who have the strictest and most limiting interpretation of what is legitimate Jewish practice.
It’s not OK.
You can donate through CBST to help defray the massive expenses faced and incurred by the Jerusalem Open House.
Rights
June 26, 2013 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2013, blog, LGBTQIA, Times Union • 0 Comments
See http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/an-overview-of-federal-rights-and-protections-granted-to-married-couples
SOCIAL SECURITY?! I never thought about that!
Deportation proceedings in Manhattan were literally stopped today because the Supreme Court overturned DOMA!
שהחינו shehecheyanu … Who gave us life
וקימנו v’kiymanu and sustained us
והגיענו v’higi’anu and brought us
לזמן הזה la-zman ha-zeh! to this moment!
I’m still wrapping my mind around it. The Federal Government now must recognize that I’m married? That makes it REAL!