Kalhoun, you also included attending the Gay Pride March and wearing the rainbow among your “shows of support” (both which I have done), and for THE PEOPLE ADDRESSED in lissener’s OP (which IMO was quite clear), those WOULD BE “militancy”. (I guess in this case, I’m as guilty as many others in the thread of a hijack) In any case, your list of examples and questions and your later statement set a very challenging standard, leaving no comfort zone; sometimes love and “support” is shown by willingness to compromise and carve out separate spheres of action(*). My mother is not required to endorse every single thing that happens in my life; if it involves something she finds distasteful or offensive, I’ll be happy if she respects it and lives with it and is civil about it. I will, conversely, respect her limits and not badger her to do that she’s not ready to.
(*It also expands the scope of the thread, by potentially settign up a situation in which if Svvt or whoever answered: “Yes on the pictures and the dinners, no on the parade, depends on the day for the rainbows” we’d go into another whole spin of “you’re WRONG, that’s not enough, etc., etc.” )
While we’re at it, I WILL make a comment critical of the first Svt4Him post, for indeed that led off rightaway with the “are you asking if I’d love my child any less” which was a bit of an attempt at reading between the lines, beyond the clear questions of the OP. Sometimes it’s better to lead with a straight response to the question asked, as asked (unless obviously rhetorical/trick), then PS as an additonal comment any response you may want to have to what you suspect are implied or hidden questions.
And the question was, “Name a random insult some people pull out of their ass when disagreed with.”
I’ll take More of Homebrew’s Hysteria for $200, Alex.
You seem to have left out the part where he says he would consider himself to have failed as a parent, and automatically assume that the child has been brainwashed.
Would either of these be acceptable to say to a child who is coming out of the closet? “I am a failure!” “You must have been seduced by some older pervert!” Or simply not take it seriously, and treat it the same as having a nose ring or blue hair. “Don’t be so silly, dear - this is just a phase. You’ll grow out of it as soon as you stop hanging around with those oddballs you go to bars with.”
Perhaps my sense of humor does not extend to torture. YMMV, so assume that it was a joke. Would you say that jokes about violence and torture are an appropriate response if your child comes out to you?
Would you make the same assumption if someone responded “If my son told me he was gay, I would go all Matthew Sheperd on his ass” - that it was all in good fun?
So how do you think a parent should react when a child announces what the parent thinks is a big mistake?
“. . . a Jewish homosexual has to make a commitment to . . . ultimately rid himself of homosexual activity. . . .it must be done and it can be done.
“ . . . a Jewish homosexual can accomplish [a life of celibacy] if he decides that the Jewish people is his ‘wife and children.’ . . . [—]if he throws his every spare moment into devotion to the welfare of his people. There are many areas where he can do this.
Because he does not have a family, a homosexual can make serious contributions to Judaism which others cannot. For example, bringing Judaism to smaller communities where there are no facilities for raising a Jewish family.
I know of a case where a rabbi successfully inspired the Jews of an entire city for over forty years because, for various reasons, he never married. Since there were no religious schools in town, the rabbis who had held his pulpit before him all moved away when their children had to start going to school. But this rabbi, because he had no family, stayed on and had a major impact on the entire city.
Activities involving much travel, such as fundraising, a vital aspect of Jewish survival, is best accomplished by someone who is not tied down to a family. I know of a homosexual who helped establish several important institutions through his fundraising and is grateful for the sexual orientation which freed him to make this contribution. . . .
See? No worries! Get a hobby—travel, hold bake sales! Become a rabbi and mentor the children of other people, since that model of dealing with homosexuality has worked so well for the Catholic church!
So your children have two choices, Izzy: procreate, or become a rabbi.
This is bullshit. More rewriting before you can object to it.
I asked them to tell us how they would act in a very specific situation, and they wrangled and wove qnd equivocated to either redefine the situation or deny its possibility, never answering the original question. By attempting to return the focus to the original question, I was not setting them up to be told they were wrong. I was trying to get them to see the inherent contradiction in a less-than-forthcoming answer, which is not the same thing.
As far as the Bruce or Brenda hypothetical, or whoever they are now, that was no more a “gotcha” than life throws at us every day. I’m asking them to consider the contradiction in their unexamined position.
My sister married a heroin addict with two abandoned children. Now, obviously as a gay man myself, I’d rather she’d have married a happy healthy lesbian. By asking other participants in this thread to consider the same situation, I’m trying to bring a clarifying lens to the discussion, not to back them into gratuitous “gotcha.”
Hmm… an apparent attempt to pretend that I’ve somehow said or implied that I was “immune”, and now “admit” that I’m not. I don’t believe I have - this looks like more of your same shtick.
lissener
He didn’t say or imply “see, no worries”. He is trying to help someone cope with a difficult situation. I think your glib attitude here is not helpful is promoting serious discussion.
More importantly, you are misrepresenting the rabbi’s point. He was not saying that since the guy was gay he had to become a rabbi. The guy could just as well become an accountant. All he was saying was that in contrast to the notion that his homosexuality stood between himself and the Jewish religion, he could actually turn his orientation into an asset and have a more positive impact religiously than he might otherwise have. Nothing more.
I still don’t feel you’ve honestly contemplated the situation that many parents find themselves in. If one in ten children someday has to deal with this, and perhaps I’m stereotyping here but let’s say that a “fervently religious” Jewish family is likely to have five children, that family has a 50% chance of raising a child who might well come to believe one lonely day that he has to choose between his parents’ love and his own sanity, or even his own life. Unless he wants to be driven into a rabbinical life to which he may not feel otherwise drawn; to be a rabbi for the sake of survival rather than divine inspiration.
I THINK you said that, if such pressures statistically lead to a higher incidence of suicide in such teens, then so be it; as if to say that you have no control over the society that has created such often unsurvivable instances of cognitive dissonance.
But I want you to realize that you DO have control over this, that it is up to you to raise a child in the knowledge that he’d never have to make such a choice.
Unless, if I read you right, you’d rather shrug “so be it.”
Delirious said, “(*It also expands the scope of the thread, by potentially settign up a situation in which if Svvt or whoever answered: “Yes on the pictures and the dinners, no on the parade, depends on the day for the rainbows” we’d go into another whole spin of “you’re WRONG, that’s not enough, etc., etc.” )”
Hey, read it any way you want. They’re all forms of support and love, and I’ll bet you they wouldn’t do any of it (though I could be wrong). You know as well as I do that ALL of the above would be accommodated for a non-gay kid. No, I don’t have to like everything my kid likes. My kid and I differ greatly in our tastes in music, clothing, and the like. But like I said before, being gay isn’t a pasttime. And in this particular situation, a child needs as much support as they can get. More than other teens with standard teenage problems. If a parent won’t step up to the plate and publicly recognize that their child isn’t a monster who deserves to go to hell, they aren’t a very loving parent.
Izzy said, “The direct answer to the title question is “no”, they won’t. In my particular subset of society (i.e. ultra-orthodox Jews) the concept is unheard of. I’ve never heard of a single case of anyone turning out to be gay other than through media reports, so it is obviously extremely extremely uncommon, if it exists at all. (Of course there may be some closeted guys for all I know, but I don’t know that the parents of these hypothetical closeted guys are in on the deal either).”
and
“Hmm… an apparent attempt to pretend that I’ve somehow said or implied that I was “immune”, and now “admit” that I’m not. I don’t believe I have - this looks like more of your same shtick.”
Izzy, the implication is there. It appears you’re as certain as you can be that gays in the ultra world are a needle in a haystack situation. All I’m saying is that you’re mistaken.
No, I’ve said repeatedly that it is not nearly as common. I don’t buy the 10% figure for the general population either, FWIW - as I said earlier it seems more like 3-4%, but I think in the case of this community it is some tiny fraction of this number. Not that this is especially significant to what someone’s reaction should be - I initially brought up mainly to address the title of your thread - but if you are going to be advocating for societal and religious changes on the basis of possible suicides it is of importance to know if this is an actual risk.
I’ve never heard of an u-oJ kid committing suicide because of gay issues. (I have heard of a kid who was molested doing so).
I’ve addressed this in my previous post - you seem to have overlooked it.
No, “so be it” is right (though not with a shrug). You do what you can within the confines of right and wrong, but you don’t change wrong to right. If you (lissener) were confronted with something that you believed was wrong, and your child faced inner turmoil as a result of an urge to do it, do you decide that actually it’s right after all for purposes of this child’s happiness? I don’t think so. So all we disagree about here is the propriety of homosexual activity. No news here.
Kalhoun, I’m fine with “needle in a haystack situation”, IOW possibly existing but extremely uncommon. In the future, please twist it any other way.
True – but the two commands which Christ taught as the key to the rest, and the behavior He enjoined in consequence, He derived from Hillel, who (apocryphally monopedally) extracted them from Torah. A Jew who is attempting to live the Law as YHWH commands it would be honorbound to consider whether his/her behavior conforms to these teachings.
This is just not true. I answered the question. You then modified your question from “what would you do?” to “how could you not change your beliefs - if you don’t your kids might consider suicide?” To which I’ve responded that I don’t think they will be in this situation, and even if they would I wouldn’t change my position.
We are going round and round on this, and I don’t anticipate addressing it any further.
Kalhoun, I would estimate about 250K in the US, about 500K in Israel and some more scattered throughout the world. (These are wild guesses). I couldn’t say about NY specifically, but the overwhelming majority of those in the US are in the NY metropolitan area (as Zahava alluded to earlier).
If a hypothetical child of mine were to, for example, as an adult decide to join a racist organisation, an anti-Semitic organisation, or some other organisation having as one of its major points of philosophy an attitude of bigotry or hatred, I would consider myself a failure as a parent. If that child were to say that the membership in that organisation was the best and truest manifestation of who they were, in a way approaching akin to orientation, I would consider myself a catastrophic failure as a parent.
A religion enshrining homophobia as a tenet is not an exception.
Yes, obviously if I’m religious then I have a hatred of homosexuals. With that frame of reference, I can see how every answer I’ve given is defensive, evasive, unclear, etc, because obviously I’d hate him as I do all homosexuals, and obviously I’d be suppressing this rage. Would I attend a gay pride parade? No. But what if my son became a heterosexual member of a Baptist church, would I need to attend all Baptist meetings in order to show my support for him? Of course not. What if he became the town gossip, would I need to be in on the conversations to show my support for him? Honestly that is a fairly small bush to hid behind. I’ve never been to my mom’s church, only a few times to my sister’s church, never to my brother-in-law’s church, and he was the pastor.
Again, SVT, you’re talking about choices instead of orientations. You’ve given your sister support by attending her church, but you wouldn’t attend a gay pride parade that your child was participating in? Fine. Would you entertain that child and his or her partner in public? Would you place their picture on your desk? We’re not talking about anything more than what you would do for another child.
Svt4Him, obviously your logic is deficient. Polycarp is, without a doubt, one of the most openly religious posters on this message board, but I have seen no evidence of hatred of homosexuals (or in fact anything else) from him. Religion (neither generally speaking nor specifically Christian) neither causes nor mandates a hatred of homosexuals.
However, you’ve made it quite clear through your posts in this and other threads that you do have a hatred of homosexuals (although you would probably prefer that we characterize it as a “dislike” or “distaste” or “disapproval”, but I choose not to indulge you in that matter), and that that hatred is derived from your religious beliefs. This is why I referred to your hatred of homosexuals as “religiously-imprinted”. And this is why you are being asked how you personally would reconcile this hatred with the love you profess to have for your son, if he were hypothetically to be gay. This is what lissener was asking in the OP, and it is what you (and others) in this thread have been avoiding answering.
“You’ve professed X and Y, which do not contradict each other, but I know that you really mean X and Z, which do contradict each other. By refusing to reconcile this “contradiction” you are avoiding answering the question or addressing the issue”.
Nice work there. (I could follow up along these lines, and challenge you to address some “inconsistency” in your position which I will make up myself and attribute to you, but you get the picture, I hope.)