An email, sent off-list to someone on a Conservative Jewish mailing list regarding the legitimization of homosexuality and homosexual relations in Conservative Judaism. Person in question expresses dismay at the position I seem to be taking on-list, of arguing from a position of “no-choice” with regards to sexual orientation/attraction.
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I agree with you 100%. But I do not know how to argue the position that I hold in my heart and mind… trying to do so always gets me in trouble debate-wise. As an aside, I myself am bisexual, and am not too enthusiastic about the day that may come when I fall in love with a woman and want to spend the rest of my life with her, but run into difficulty because of being out as bisexual and unwilling to dishonestly declare myself as having come out as a “lesbian” in order to plead “lack of choice.” As I have stated previously, I am not a halachic scholar and feel more than a little underqualified to argue halacha with folks here, most of whom are quite a bit older than I am and more studied. I’m not entirely convinced that there is a strictly halachic way to legitimize same-sex relations the way I would like to see them legitimized, without a radical reinterpretation of the root text (which I am willing to do, but can understand the reluctance of many Conservative Jews, and certainly of the Law Committee, to do so).

Another big part of the problem is the defining of the homosexual/non-heterosexual experience. Many gay folks of the strictly homosexual persuasion are perfectly content to argue, and to argue loudly, for lack of choice, even arguing from genetics (for which there is no scientific evidence as yet) and as such this has become largely the accepted premise in pro-gay circles. As someone who feels attraction for people on an individual and personal basis largely regardless of gender, I cannot accept this premise. I am willing to take a person at their word that they are incapable of feeling attraction for a certain sex, but obviously none of us knows what truly goes on in the hearts and minds of others. What I do feel to be a truth, though, is that a person’s orientation is more than just a simple choice. This is what I find to be so insulting about the kashrut analogy… I have a deep appreciation for the practice of kashrut and keep kosher myself… but I have known my whole life that it was a fairly simple matter to choose kashrut. The choosing may have deep ramifications for a person’s personality and identity and how they relate to themselves and the world around them… personally I believe that this is the primary reason for keeping kashrut, but we can discuss this later… but it is a simple choice.

Relationships are not as simple, and who one finds themselves attracted to or in love with is a much deeper and more complex matter. It used to be that relationships were sanctioned primarily as business deals, and that the sexual proclivities or love interests of the people involved were not of as great consequence in the initiation of the transaction as we now consider them to be (interestingly enough, I don’t hear anyone arguing that we should go back to match-making to solve these problems of love and attraction wreaking havoc with our halachic system). In our earliest history, where men had the choice to take multiple partners whereas only the woman was under significant sexual sanction, it was not, I imagine, considered problematic since the person of primary importance in the scenario had options for sexual satisfaction beyond the confines of a single life-partner, the need for true love and compatibility between married partners was less paramount than it must be in our largely monogamous paradigm.

Now that we largely accept a world view in which love and attraction and compatibility are considered primary in the choosing of a life-partner, matters of who one can enter into such a relationship with bear reexamination. The reexamination itself is not without precedent, since we have in our history the rabbinic banning of polygamy (something else that no one seems to be advocating the reinitiation of, interestingly enough… might solve some problems) but of course we all know that it is rabbinically easier to go from less restrictive to more restrictive… though the opposite is also not without precedent. The biggest problem is, I suppose, that darned slippery slope argument in which I have refused to engage. As I think I have stated before, each of the other sexual prohibitions which we uphold in Judaism have multiple halachic and extra-halachic reasons for maintaining them, and I see no way in which this will change anytime in the foreseeable future… but the fact that I cannot foresee the future does not mean much for a halachic argument… it is true that the same has been, and still could be said for homosexual relations.

The plain and painful truth is that I simply do not know how to argue it.

And honestly, this is part of why I want to go to rabbinical school… because I want to learn enough to frame my positions legitimately within the Jewish context.