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| Stamford Charedi leader addressing the protest (The JC) |
Be that as it may, one group that has experienced a lot of discrimination is the LGBT community. That is why the US has extended civil rights legislation to include them.
I am a firm advocate of treating everyone with respect and the human dignity they deserve. That includes LGBT people. However, as an Orthodox Jew I cannot accept the forbidden nature of a lifestyle that is conducive to violating Halacha. This is why for example I cannot approve of gay marriage.
There is also no sin in having gender dysphoria - the tragic condition where someone believes they were born the wrong sex. What is forbidden is acting like it in ways that the Torah forbids. Which certainly includes sex reassignment surgery or even cross-dressing. But there is a difference between respecting people for who they are and approving of what they might be doing in private - or even considering doing.
The question arises about how we transmit these values to our children. 50 years ago LGBT did not exist as a movement. To the extent that people like this existed it was kept in the closet. LGBT people did not reveal that about themselves for fear of being ostracized from their community. Which they surely would have been. Being gay was considered a mental disorder. And most people never heard of gender dysphoria which was considered extremely rare.
It wasn’t. It was just kept in the closet for fear of what public disclosure would do to their lives.
Today being gay is quite common… and widely accepted as part of the social order. And altough not as common, gender dysphoria is out in the open too. It is not as rare as it was once thought to be.
In my view this subject has to be addressed educationally. Our children need to know about this subject and how to deal with it.
In the case of the those if us that believe in biblical values children should be taught what LGBT is and to be sensitive to people that are LGBT. And to treat them with human dignity and respect. At the same time they must be taught what the Torah says about the kind of behavior common to them. In other words they must not be taught that behavior the Torah prohibits is the same as that which the Torah permits.
This brings me to OFSTED (Office of Standards in Education). They inspect and supervise schools in the UK. Relatively recently they established educational guidelines requiring schools to teach this subject. There is an ongoing conflict between OFSTED and the Charedi (Mostly Chasidic) community in the Stamford Hill section of London.
Charedi leaders are extremely upset and angry by this new requirement. They have been fighting it since it OFSTED required it. As a recent meeting protesting it demonstrates. If I understand correctly they lose government funding if they don’t. They refuse to even acknowledge the existence of LGBT. Let alone teach their children how to deal it . They frame their objection pretty much the same as being forced to teach their children to be Mechalel Shabbos.
That is patently false. OFSTED wants British children to know what LGBT is and to not to discriminate against them.
And yet, this community is treating this subject as pornography of the worst kind. But it is not. It is merely abut being educated about a growing group of people and to teach them to not discriminate against them. None of which is against the Torah. Which is why UK Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis came out with an educational guide for religious day schools to follow which is acceptable to OFSTED.
One might argue that the Charedi world has the right to teach their children in any manner they wish and to consider Rabbi Mirvis’s guide immoral. Just a secular humanist has the right to consider the Torah immoral. Perhaps they should have that right. But the government has the right to say that their requirement for government funding is not being met if they refuse to follow their guidelines.
This kind of strident opposition to something the Chief Rabbi says is OK - does not put the Charedi world in the UK in a good light. They need to stop and think about how Charedim - the most recognizably religious Jews in the UK are seen by the rest of the world. I don’t think the way they are handling it is a Kiddush HaShem. It would be nice if for a change if they actually respected the UK’s Chief Rabbi, followed his example, and realize that they no longer live in the 19th century.
*Although my message remains the same - in my haste to post on this subject I neglected to do the research necessary to get it right. I apologize for the errors and ommisions. My thanks to Paul Shaviv for apprising readers (and myself) about the nature of OFSTED and what is really at stake.
Instead re-writing the post, I have chosen re-post his comment here as an addendum to the post. His comments follow in their entirety - HM
As several UK commenters have pointed out, this has nothing to do with funding, and it is a mistake to say, as someone does, that they can avoid the issue by foregoing funding. ALL schools in the UK, private or public, have to register with the ‘Office of Standards in Education’ - OfStEd. This inspects and supervises schools and other institutions which care for children.
They have to meet minimum standards of health, safety etc - and of curriculum. The latter broadly requires schools to educate pupils for functional life in Britain. Haredi schools run a spectrum from well-regarded, well-run establishments to totally illegal ‘chedorim’ and Yeshivas. It should be mentioned that part of Government concern regarding the latter is collateral damage to Government concern about extremist Islamic ‘madrasas’.
Occasionally, the lack of professionalism of the more extreme Haredi operations gets publicity - often when students are taken on ‘tiyulim’ in mountains from which they have to be rescued by emergency services, or a few years ago, when a whole group of bachurim were almost drowned on the south coast.
So - to the matter at hand. In practice, OfStEd have made it clear that they would be satisfied with very minimum compliance. Given the individuals one is likely to meet anywhere around, including Stamford Hill, readers of the blog may judge for themselves whether Haredi pupils are better off or worse off learning at least something about them in school; let alone dealing with friends, neighbors or family of different identities.
The group featured in the posting - as Mr. Newcomer points out - are against all compliance with OfStEd standards, including the teaching of English, arithmetic etc. But that is the law in the UK. (He, Binyomin, Shimon and others may derive some amusement from the fact that I am distantly related by marriage of one of my children to Rav Schlesinger - who helped me many years ago with my Oxford M.Phil. Thesis - the Rosenheims, Bambergers and back directly to the Baal Shem of Michelstadt.)
