The community has released a short hip hop music video that features an unidentified black performer singing, “What you gonna do with them School Bills, we gonna scrap them, I know what’s best for me and mine… School bills gotta go.”
I have mixed feelings about this. It depends on what the actual mandate is. If it is about teaching their children to have respect for other human beings and not judge them based on their sexual orientation, I am with the government.
If, on the other hand it is about teaching their children that a gay lifestyle is morally equivalent to a straight lifestyle, then I am with the Chasidim. Frankly I’m not sure which one of those two options is what the UK requires. The former is quite in line with Judaism. The latter is not.
But if I had to guess, I would say it is the former. That’s because when the UK came out with these requirements Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis came out with a specific set of guidelines about how Orthodox Schools should teach those subjects. Which satisfied those requirements. There is no way that Rabbi Mirvis would ever set up guidelines that violated the Torah.
Apparently Chasidim do not want to talk about these issues at all. I reject the claim that being forced to teach them it is so egregiously anti Torah that they would be forced to leave the country. I understand that they surely don’t want to promote a gay lifestyle as simply an alternative lifestyle. But I don’t think that is the case. It’s all about respect for the other. Not about normalizing a gay lifestyle.
But the Chasidim of the UK see things differently. The very mention of LGBTQ in the classroom is seen as contrary to the Torah in their eyes.
I guess that these Chasidim do not make any distinction between being gay and having forbidden gay sex. So that if someone identifies as gay in their community they are probably completely ostracized. There can be no gay people in their midst. They consider people who have same sex attractions abominable human beings. Unfit to love among them.
To my way of thinking – this is completely unacceptable. People can’t help who they are attracted to. They cannot change. If one is a gay Chasid he has to hide that fact lest he be discovered and thrown out of his community. My guess is that one will not find an overtly gay Chasid in any Chasidic community. Coming out of the closet is not an option.