HOUDINI'S REACH

Demoralized?: We are heirs to a timeless tradition and it would behoove us to stick to our guns. (Rabbi Avi Shafran, July 11, 2003, Jewsweek.com)

What the High Court decided was that the United States Constitution does not allow for laws that prohibit a particular sort of private behavior. That is no small matter, to be sure, and in fact raises the unsettling prospect of the High Court similarly declaring unconstitutional laws prohibiting things like incest between consenting adults, or polygamous and polyandrous (multi-husband) arrangements, or bestiality (which has its advocates, like Princeton Professor Peter Singer).

But the recent High Court decision, in the end, we must remember, speaks to the Constitution, not the Torah; to the law of mortals, not the Creator; to the police powers of the state, not the moral power of our faith.

Nor, for that matter, does the ongoing "culture war" to which Justice Scalia made reference have any bearing on ultimate truth - at least not for a people whose peoplehood was forged at the foot of Mt. Sinai.

Society all around us may be moving in a direction where the stigma once attached to homosexual activity may be astonishingly disappearing, but the words of Leviticus remain beyond even Houdini's reach. [...]

The societal and jurisprudential acceptance of homosexual relationships is troubling enough. But when acts the Torah clearly forbids in the strongest terms are embraced, or even considered for embrace, by Jewish religious leaders who exercise their leadership by consulting "where society is" rather than where it should be, adjectives simply fail.

Jews faithful to the Torah -- to the Jewish laws and ideals that have been transmitted carefully and zealously over the ages -- would do well these days to remind themselves that, no matter how larger society may evolve or devolve, we are heirs to a timeless religious tradition.

The current American cultural milieu will redefine morality as it sees fit. So, for better or worse, will religious organizations and movements. But Jews, whatever their affiliation or lack of one, or whatever their "pressure point"-sensitive rabbis may tell them, are a people chosen to show the world what it means to bend human wills to that of the Creator of all.

The point that the Rabbi misses here is that because of anti-discrimination law the State may intrude into what is fundamentally the private sphere and force anyone to not merely tolerate such deviant behaviors but countenance them in our homes, businesses, social organizations, schools, social institutions, etc. Modern tolerance is ultimately intolerant of the kind of religious/moral line drawing of which the Rabbi speaks. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2003 7:50 AM