Lions and Tigers and Gays ...

Something must be said about the momentous world in which I'm living. It's a little bit of New York and a lotta bit of the rest of the world. I've been told that us liberals, especially New Yoke foke, is just clueless, out of the loop. I'm at the center of what has been for some weeks a gay situation. It's a situation that I would argue is relevant for all citizens of the West.

Gay it is; happy, it is not. The Conservative movement within Judaism has been debating the status of homosexuals for many years. The issue was revisited this month on International Women's Day. The decision to vote on maintaining the exclusion of gay women and men in the rabbinate and the prohibition on same-sex unions was postponed until December. The powers-that-be have called for further revisions to the potential positions to be considered.

For most Jews in New York, this is not an issue. It's about time. It's the new millenium, and we're still excluding people? For Jews elsewhere, this may be a big step. "We're rewriting Scripture," some claim. "We're picking and choosing," it may seem to others. These excuses would only sound familiar to you if you are old enough to remember that they were the same excuses used to protest the ban slavery and allowing the "mixing of the races" in schools and matirmony. No one has suggested that these advancements are easy. No, they are only necessary. Growing pains, if you will.

I have to confess: I am ashamed to be living in such times. I can only imagine the days when divorce, interracial dating, and working and/or unmarried women were the taboos of the time. Segregated schools seem as distant to me as black and white films. Unrecognized unions in America seem as archaic as illegal abortion. I propse to the world: Isn't it time that we lifted the customs and prohibitions of the WASP from our Jewish laws and ethnic rituals. Sure, the WASPs founded this country, but they aren't the majority anymore. Their traditions have become the established Church that they never founded. When will we as Jews and liberals achieve true separation from the One, True Tradition?

I remain optimistic that the status of lesbians and gays will improve under a new generation of Jews who are committed as much to Jewish tradition as we are to basic human rights, the latter being a virtue that our people highly esteem. In a way, it's exciting to be an unambiguously gay student at a school that is openly assessing my worth and potential contribution to Judaism and to the moral and intelelctual leadership that we provide to Jews and Gentiles alike.

My work at JTS, the seminary near the center of this controversy, will continue to examine the contribution of women to the whole of Jewish life and their intrinsic right to equal access to Jewish texts and to law-making. I haven't forgotten, however, that no one's rights can be ensured if the majority of the human race, women!, are not protected by our laws and our societies' mentalities. Until the work of women is encouraged and enshrined in our most central values, Jews, gays, the disabled, the poor, the divorced, the disturbed, and the malnourished will find no home in the hearts of those in power. If the children are the future, then tolerant women and men alike are the present.