Tolerance - Not Normalization

I have no clue about the religious status of Rabbi Capers J. Funnye. I don’t even know if - as a convert – whether he is technically Jewish by Orthodox standards or not - let alone a rabbi.

But yesterday he sounded more Orthodox than many Orthodox rabbis I have heard on similar occasions. He was one of many clerics invited to offer a prayer at the ceremony yesterday. He spoke about the current religious season of the Jewish people. (The vast majority of whom do not have a clue about.) Heavily sprinkled with Hebrew he spoke about Pesach, Sefira, Matan  Torah,  Moshe and Aharon – and concluded with the Bracha for Mayor Lightfoot that the descendants of Aaron were given for purposes of blessing the Jewish people. (Which many of us use to bless our children every Shabbos.)

I was quite amazed by that. But that is not really the subject I wanted to talk about today. Just wanted to mention it because I thought it was pretty cool.

For those that don’t know, Lori Lightfoot is the first black openly gay woman to be the mayor of Chicago. To the best of my knowledge she if the first person of that description to be mayor of any major US city.

I voted for her. Of the two people running, she was the obvious better choice for me. I was not alone. She was elected by landslide. All 50 wards in Chicago voted for her. Including the heavily Orthodox 50^th Ward where Debra Silverstein - an Orthodox Jewish woman serves as alderman.

Why I voted for her is not the issue. The issue is how normalized leading a gay lifestyle has become. Mayor Lightfoot’s wife and Chicago’s new first lady, Amy Eshleman, is a white (and I believe Jewish) woman. They have a beautiful adopted daughter and what seems to be a happy and loving family relationship. There was hardly any commentary about it by the news people I heard reporting that event - other than mentioning it in passing and saying just how wonderful it is that living a gay lifestyle in Chicago has become so normal and accepted.

It’s hard not to see Lightfoot that way. But the fact is that living a gay lifestyle is still considered seriously sinful behavior by all three major faiths. The Torah considers Mishkav Zechor (the common mode of sexual intercourse between 2 males) to be a capital offense. (Although female homosexuality is a lesser sin and certainly not a capital offense, it is still considered sinful. The point is that society makes no moral distinction between male and female homosexuality. In both cases it has been completely normalized.)

This is the same Torah that Christians follow. Even their ‘new testament’ forbids it. Homosexuals are even executed in some Muslim countries.

(As an aside – even though Jewish Law considers it a capital offense - it was extremely difficult to convict anyone of it back in the day when we had the power to do so. There are so many requirements for a court to convict and execute someone that it was rarely ever done. Today it would be impossible to do so. There is no way we can execute anyone today. But that does not mitigate the severity of the sin.)  

And yet despite the religious tenets of all three faiths it has become normal in the western world today. It is as though the American people has decided to excise those verses from the bible because we now have our own new moral sensibilities. God’s laws are the ones now deemed immoral!

This is not God forbid to say that we ought to persecute gay people. On the contrary. We need to give them the respect due to all human beings created in the image of God. We need to realize that same sex attraction exists. And that it is rare if not impossible for a person’s sexual nature to change.  And even for those that act upon it, we are in no position to judge – or even know exactly what goes on in their bedroom. As I have said countless times, we are not God’s accountants. Sins that are done in private are between the sinner and God. And should be left to God. 

But that does not mean normalizing it. And by virtue of the fact that gay people can now get legally married, that is exactly what western civilization has done.

I believe that abandoning biblical values and substituting our own subjective ones can hurt the human race. Once human reason replaces God’s laws evil can easily prevail. There are all kinds of thought systems that make perfect sense for the perspective of rational thought and yet can easily descend to pure evil.

For example the idea that one race is superior to another can easily be rationalized. That was what Nazism was all about. Depending on what measures one uses, one can easily say that a particular race is superior. And that inferior races are so problematic that they need to be eradicated in order to secure a better future for the superior race. Once that race is eliminated, the world will be far better off. It might even be considered immoral to allow the inferior race to diminish the welfare of the superior race. Germany was nothing if not a more civilized and advanced society than the rest of Europe. That is what happens when you allow human reason to prevail over God’s laws. Germany chose genocide as the best means to achieve a positive outcome for its ‘superior’ people!

I am not saying that normalizing a gay lifestyle will end up with genocide. All I am saying is that we ought to not always allow our own rational thoughts about right and wrong to prevail. Especially when it contradicts God’s laws.

Bottom line - there is a difference between tolerance and understanding on the one hand – and normalization and glorification on the other. In my view the former is right and the latter is wrong. (Which is why I am against gay marriage.)

There are unfortunately a lot God’s laws that have been abandoned in our world today. Immorality is not only tolerated, it is glorified by Hollywood. We have gone from a society of monogamous relationships where sex between a man and a woman was reserved for marriage - to a society where a man and a woman will not marry each other until they find out if they are sexually compatible. The thinking now is: ‘How can you marry someone unless you know that?’

That is what is we have descended to as a nation.

Normalizing the gay lifestyle is a another step down that road. And that – among other things - is what yesterday’s inauguration said to me.