 |
| Lori Lightfoot being sworn in - as wife and daughter look on (The Gazette) |
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 50th
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 from 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.
