Reply to Shmuley Boteach on Gay Marriage

By Rabbi David Eidensohn

Shmuely Boteach’s article on Gay Marriage is really an assault on family people. Boteach masquerades as an Orthodox Jew. In this article he stands revealed as a pagan who battles with the Jewish bible. He may practice Orthodoxy, but his politically correct beliefs are far from true Orthodox and Talmud thinking. I developed this in an attack on Shmuely who maintained, in his article on September 11, that G-d does not punish us for our sins. Suffering, said Shmuely, is something we should not repent for, but complain about to G-d! This contradicts the bible and the Talmud in many places.

The first paragraph in Shmuely’s article on Gay marriage puts the spin on the debate. No facts, but descriptions, actually, lies, about “the hysteria surrounding the debate on gay marriage.” Shmuely opposes “the shrill homophobia…of many religiously minded colleagues.” In other words, when I sit down and write an article about the bible and the Talmud that proscribes Gay Marriage, I am really being hysterical and I rant because I am a homophobe. These are lies. They are lies from the lips of a very articulate and clever prevaricator.

Shmuely then lists ten considerations to guide us in discussing Gay Marriage.

One, is the “boldface lie” that gay marriage is “the single most serious threat to the heterosexual institution of marriage.” Shmuely tells us, with a straight face, that this is a “boldface lie,” not just a plain lie, because the real problem with marriage is from the heterosexuals! That’s right. People like me, who have ten children and thirty grandchildren, have destroyed marriage. And imagine the audacity of me to consider Gay Marriage not a real marriage!

Sure, there are problems with marriage today. Yes, heterosexuals, even people like me with all of our progeny can improve our act. But if Gay Marriage becomes marriage, we make a mockery of marriage. Next will come marriage between brothers and sisters (why not?), and then, if people really find true satisfaction with their dog, and there are such people, why can they not sanction this with the civil title of marriage?

Even if you don’t go so far, you can at least let people marry their mothers. Freud would understand. So, it is surely not a “bold faced lie” to consider Gay Marriage a mortal blow to the status of marriage and family. I am very upset that anyone can call me a “bold faced liar” especially when the person doing so is dishing out whoppers by the dozen.

Shmuely points out that gays are a small part of the population, but heterosexual divorce is fifty percent. So what? Does this mean that gays are not a problem? The secular culture with its fun and games, its consumption, its denigration of a real father and a real mother that children can survive with, is responsible for the fifty percent divorce rate.  So, do we make things worse by making society more secular, more remote from natural and normal family life?

Next, Shmuely says that homosexuality is just as natural and normal as oral sex. If you practice oral sex, you must believe in gay marriage!

Those homosexuals spraying their infected and battered anal cavities in desperate effort to alleviate pain and infection know better than the rest of us just how unnatural their compulsions are. Nature hates homosexuality. HIV and AIDS didn’t develop from oral sex. Studies have shown that homosexuality is a compulsion that is not related to human love but to chemical releases. Some gays have a dozen partners in one night. This is “natural”? This produces the worst diseases. I am not saying that oral sex is right or wrong. But it is surely not as unnatural as homosexual sex.

Why does the cool and chic Shmuely oppose Gay Marriage? Don’t think because he is Jewish and believes in the Talmud and bible that are so much against homosexuality and certainly gay marriage. No, Shmuely invokes Hinduism, to show that life is about opposites joining. Men and women are opposite, so they should join, but homosexuals are not different, so they should not join. But Shmuely later says we should give gays civil unions. Why give them unions and not call it marriage?

If Shmuely reserves the sanctity of marriage only for real opposites, why not join dogs and people? Why not join mothers and sons, or fathers and daughters? They are opposites.

Shmuely invokes Zoroaster paganism that the world is comprised of antagonistic forces in continuous competition, such as light and dark, good and evil. Therefore, in keeping with this system of dueling dualities, we should, says Shmuely, allow marriage only between opposites.

Shmuely, I prefer to think of my marriage as something not in continuous contention, and I don’t think that my wife or I enjoy being compared to darkness or evil. Two good people, blessed by G-d, not the paganism of Shmuely, join because G-d sanctions their union. He does not sanction homosexual union, and certainly not homosexual marriage.

Shmuely then tells us that gay men who are also attracted to women make better fathers and husbands than those who are not gay. Shmuely, why don’t you improve your marriage with a little homosexuality? Zoroaster would understand.

Shmuely tells us that religious people who tell homosexuals to live alone violate the bible! The bible says, “It is not good for a man to be alone.” Therefore, says Shmuely, if a man lives with another man, they are “good.” Phew. Shmuely, this is the deal. A man without a wife is “alone” and lacks real “goodness.” However a man with another man is not just lacking in “goodness,” he is evil, an abomination. G-d said that to Moses at Sinai. That is in the bible. When we demand that people recognize the evil and abominative essence of homosexuality, we do what G-d wants. Physics accepts the cosmos as being of Anthropic Design, meaning that its creation was for people. The Creator who made the cosmos had to tell us why. He did this, to Israel at Sinai. Anyone who opposes homosexual marriage has nature, the cosmos, G-d, and the bible to back up his arguments.

We will leave the name calling to Shmuely.